Wharf Rat
by JackValhalla
Summary: An alternate near-history interpretation of Worm by Wildbow, in which the Administrator shard did not transfer from Danny Hebert to Taylor. A butterfly-effect-like story in which one tiny change caused a larger change, which causes larger changes still. Rated T for dark violent themes and imagery, no sexual content.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: This is a work of fanfiction based on Worm, published and owned by Wildbow and found at parahumans. wordpress .com. No ownership of this setting or source material is claimed or implied. The story here is heavily intermixed with the original material, it is highly recommended that the audience read the original story before reading the fanfiction here. For those familiar with Worm, this is an alternate history in which the administrator shard did not transfer from Danny Hebert to Taylor. Inspiration for this story was drawn from this reddit thread_ _r/Parahumans/comments/4ak6m0/spoiler_what_if/ and the original author's statements about what would happen in this circumstance. The fanfic author took a few liberties for narrative purposes but has kept every aspect as true to the original as possible._ _And the final chapter of this story is going to include a post-script that itemizes every change and explains explicitly why those changes were made. Thank you for your patience and your comments._ Class ended in five minutes and all he could think was, _an hour is not long enough for lunch_.

He checked his watch and then pulled out his cell phone to send a text. His fingers were long and narrow, with the bone structure of an academic or an artiste, but the calluses on his palms and fingertips spoke to a less sedentary lifestyle than that. His fingernails tapped against the phone's case as he sent a message. _Outside now, picnic on front lawn._ He pulled a bandanna out of his back pocket and mopped at his forehead, scrubbing a light dapple of sweat away from his skin. The weather was cool enough that he could get a chill if he left the sweat to evaporate off his skin. He had ridden over fast to make the most of his time, and now he was a bit mussed and he tried to get himself presentable. He ran the bandanna over his thinning dark hair then put his glasses back on, blinking as his cell buzzed in his left hand.

 _K_ , it said. He arched an eyebrow. Mr. Gladly must have let the class out early again if she was responding so soon. One of his rules in letting her take a cell phone to school was that she leave it on vibrate and that she not answer it during class.

He tapped a rapid message back to her. _Avoid upstairs girl's bathroom, Emma +2 headed that way._

The return text took only a few seconds. _Okay. Thanks._

He slid his own backpack off of his back. It was an athletic model, with a foam pad built into it to soak up sweat from off his back. It wasn't as big as most bookbags, but it held enough. In this case, a beach towel he could spread on the grass and an insulated cooler bag with padded sides, and a thermos. His bike was chained up to the rack just twenty feet away. There was no basket on the front, or we would not have needed to bother with the backpack. He tucked his cell phone into the side pocket of his cargo shorts and sat back on the blanket, using the natural slope of the high school's front lawn to recline back on his long, lanky elbows with his legs stretched out comfortably in front of him.

The teenage girl that flopped down next to him a minute later was even more slender than he was, but she was willowy where he was wiry. They had the same large, slow-blinking eyes behind their glasses, though she had her mother's dark curly hair and wide mouth that smiled easily. "Hey Dad," she said, leaning over to give him a casual half-hug before she leaned forward and unzipped the cooler bag. "What'd you bring? Cavatini? This is leftovers from Tuesday, Dad, that's cheating."

"Leftovers need to be eaten," he said easily. "The thermos has tea for you." He pulled his knees half up to his chest and looped his arms around them while she opened the tupperwares and released clouds of steam, and unrolled the terrycloth that held the aluminum tableware. "So, Mr. Gladly let class out early?"

"Yeah," she said, handing him one plastic dish and keeping one for herself. The pasta casserole was a family favorite even now that their family was just the two of them. He took his fork and dug in while she popped the lid on the thermos and breathed deeply, inhaling the calming scent. "We've got homework in his class, to think about the impact that capes have had on our world. There's gonna be a group project on Monday, and he'll be giving the winners treats from the vending machines."

"Uh huh," he said, noncommittally and neutrally, as he picked up another forkful.

"I'm torn between blowing it off just to avoid the MSG and sugar substitutes and levodextroglucosamate, or going all over-achiever on this and taking a trip to Protectorate HQ this weekend so I can dominate this assignment," she said, her tone ambivalent.

"Don't you dare drop your grades just to stay clear of junk food," he said, giving her a theatrically overdone mock-scolding with his eyebrows drawn down and a waggling finger. "Your therapist is still worried that you're anorexic, and she's barely accepting that your mother and I both have that sort of metabolism. If you give her any more reason to worry, I'll fit you with a feedbag."

Taylor snorted. It wasn't funny, really, but it was an attempt to be funny, and sometimes that's enough when people love each other. "Okay, no blowing off the assignment then. So what do you say, shall we drop by PHQ this weekend? Even if we don't see anyone, we can take the tour or something. Heck, even the PRT guards in the lobby have probably got enough insight into the topic to guarantee me an A grade on this."

Her father snorted. "Subtle, you're not."

"Yoda, you're not," she retorted. "C'mon."

He sighed. "Okay. We can go. But we do it my way, all right? We don't commit to anything until we're really sure about it."

"Got it," she said, nodding. "Even though it's been three months and I can't imagine being any more cautious that that. By the way, thanks for the heads-up on Emma and Madison and Sophia. Lately my good days are just when I can steer clear of them altogether."

"We watch out for each other," he reminded her, offering a fistbump. She rolled her eyes, but only left him hanging for a few seconds before she rapped her knuckles against his. He pulled his hand back with his fingers splayed, mimicking the sound of an explosion as he did, and her eyeroll grew more severe.

She was taking a big swig of her tea when a sharp, slightly nasal voice called out from behind them. "Mister Hebert!" it called out.

Danny Hebert sighed, and swiveled his head to look up the slope of the lawn to the front doors of the high school. Mrs. Blackwell stood on the front stoop, with her badly-bobbed hair and her pinched, severe face and her clothes that crossed the line from 'professional' to 'morose'. He sighed, and rolled himself up to his feet. "You enjoy the picnic, honey, I'm gonna talk to your principal." He walked up the incline, cutting across the grass until he hit the paved walkway and strolled up to where she stood. She had her arms crossed and glared down at him past her nose, using the stairs to seize a psychological advantage of height. That was added to the psychological advantage that she held by standing still and having him walk to her. He negated that petty power play by walking a bit more slowly, so that she was waiting on him and growing impatient on his timetable rather than scrambling to accommodate her schedule, and then he hit the steps and walked up, but rather than stopping in front of her several steps down so that he was craning his neck to look up at her he walked to the top so she had to turn to the side and crane her neck to look up at him, he had most of a foot of height over her and he used it.

"Yes, Principal Blackwell?" he said, smiling pleasantly.

"Mister Hebert, your daughter needs to eat in the cafeteria, students are not allowed to leave school grounds for lunch until their senior year," she said, her tone accusatory.

"She's on school grounds," he pointed out. "She's on your front lawn. Heck, the district owns the empty lot across the street and the undeveloped land behind the football field, I could take her two blocks from here and still be on school grounds." He kept his tone light and casual, but firm. "We're just having a picnic. A little bonding time in the family."

"She should be bonding with her peers of her own age." The woman snapped back, making no effort to be as non-confrontational as he was.

He arched an eyebrow at that. "Because that worked so well in January. What, did someone complain that their favorite victim has been avoiding them?"

Her scowl sharpened and she lifted her shoulders as if to puff herself up and look bigger. "I-"

Danny interrupted her before she could burst out whatever outburst she had planned. "Look, you've got the note from her psychiatrist in your files. She is to have a low-stress environment, with regular breaks and accommodation for her defense mechanisms," he pointed out. "That is part of the deal you signed as a court settlement."

"I can't just have her walk away whenever," Blackwell retorted. "If the other students get the same idea we'd never be able to enforce the tardy policy or truancy."

Danny kept his tone mild and curious, cocking his head to the side. "Do you have many students here that have a psychiatric profile and a court order that they be given a low-stress environment?" he asked.

"No, but-"

"No, so their case is different than hers," Danny cut in again. "Tell me, when your superintendent signed off on the court settlement that ended the lawsuit, did he intend for you to defy the terms of the settlement?"

The Principal's cheeks tightened and her eyes hardened, she was past the point of listening. "Just get her inside."

"When I am damn well good and ready, or at the end of her lunch period, whichever comes first," he replied. He turned, and walked down the steps, cutting across the grass to where Taylor sat. She looked pensive, her shoulders hunched in on herself. Her phone was on the towel next to her, open to some idle texts to one of her classmates.

"I heard some of that," Taylor said. "You shouldn't have done that, you antagonize her and she'll take it out on me."

Danny laid a hand on her shoulder. "If she tries to give you a hard time, tell me about it. Any little thing, any big thing. Between that court order, your psychiatric evaluations, the fact that they kept you in the same school as those girls, and every other way they've dropped the ball, they're on thin ice as it is. My union's got about a hundred kids in this school, if I start posting pamphlets that kids in this area are getting sub par treatment, the PTA will be overrun at the same time as their superintendent is hit with contempt of court. And that's without help from our 'friends'."

She let out a low, sliding whistle of appreciation. "Blitzed from all sides. I like it. Thanks for taking care of it, Dad." He grinned and scuffed her hair, then returned to eat the rest of his lunch while she told him about math and English. Inside he was a turmoil. Had she been right? Should he have capitulated to the Principal's petty demands? Would antagonizing the administration hurt his girl in ways he couldn't prove? Or was he doing the right thing by getting her some fresh air on the warmest day they'd had so far this spring, away from a school that had already pushed her right past her breaking point? The boiling questions and uncertainty and the need to do the right thing, it had been a part of his life for a long time now. Even before his daughter's troubles at school. Ever since his wife had died in that car crash.

It had been a turning point. If Dinah Alcott or some other thinker in the same vein had looked at that night, they would have seen two branching paths. A slightly warmer day, a slightly colder day. One in which a female doctor with a minor head cold had come in to work, and another path in which she had called in sick and the ER shift had been covered by a male doctor called in on his day off. One path in which Danny and Taylor Hebert got the news of Annette's death from a sniffling, sympathetic-looking young woman, and one path in which they heard it from a harried, annoyed older man. One path in which Danny and Taylor clung to each other for support, one path in which their relationship strained to the point of estrangement. One path in which Danny became phobic of cell phones, one in which he developed an aversion to cars.

In the path where Taylor and Danny didn't speak, she bottled up the abuses of her bullies and felt herself helpless and isolated when things came to a head. In the path where Taylor and Danny supported each other, she always felt like she had an ally to get her through those times. But the comfort of his daughter came with increased anxiety that he might lose her, increased pressure and stress at every thing that harmed her or scared her. In this path, Danny Hebert had gotten a phone call in January that his daughter was going to the emergency room for a nervous breakdown after her bullies had tormented her in a particularly horrific way. His support had made the difference to her, his love had kept her from developing a trigger event. But the stress of responsibility had given him his own trigger event.

A turning point. One path rather than the other.

But he still struggled with that boil of self-doubt and guilt. The slow simmer of "should I or shouldn't I", the bubbling of "was that the right thing or the wrong thing?" The intersection of responsibility and confusion was a tough crux to bear.

"Tea?" she offered, holding out the thermos with the last swallow of cooling tea in it.

"Yours," he replied, nodding to her. He dug the re-usable water bottle from his bag and tugged the cap open, taking a long swig of chilled water to hydrate for his trip back to the union hall. "It's not a bad day out, is it?" He stared across the scape, taking in the trees that rustled in response to the wind, the low clouds scudding across the blue-gray sky.

Taylor shrugged. She was wearing a thick green fleecy hoodie over her top, and two pairs of fluffy socks inside her tennis shoes. "Not bad. Little chilly still."

"I guess I'm still warm from the ride," he conceded.

"Probably," she said. "I know I already said thank you for helping me steer away from Emma-"

"You did."

"-but can I also say that it's a little creepy knowing how easily you know that? Like, the fact that you know that, means that now I know too much about the school. Ick."

"Don't give me that 'ick'. You've read enough to know that they are hygienic and safe."

She doubled down on the 'ick' face. "I've read enough to know that they can get addicted to human blood. Ick."

He shrugged. "It's a forty-year-old building. Wooden supports, utility crawlspaces, basement boiler room, all of the exterior doors have foxing or scuffing on the insulation. You're lucky there's not lead paint and asbestos."

"Still, rats in the walls?"

"Not all of the walls," he lied smoothly. "Just enough for me to keep track of stuff. They have great hearing, and a powerful sense of smell. If I move them to the vents, they can tell me a lot about what's going on."

Taylor closed up her tupperware container. "Still, it's the fact that you're going to ride away, and they'll still be here. I don't mind the ones you control, it's the others that bug me."

the noise in the cafeteria changed timber, more clattering of dishes and the voices were pitched to a higher degree of anticipation. "Sounds like your lunch period is nearly up," he said, and leaned over to give her a hug before she stood up and started stretching. "Don't forget your art project, okay?"

"Sure Dad," she said while he wrapped everything up in the beach towel and stuffed it into his backpack. She came in for another hug before she jogged up the steps to her next class. Danny Hebert slung the pack over his shoulder and went to the bike rack.

The chain was a thick insulated cable with a combination lock built into it, the combination was also his PIN code at his bank. The chain was fairly new but already rather weathered, scraped in places. The bike itself was nearly the opposite, a secondhand frame picked up from a pawn shop that had been cared for and tuned up so that only a close inspection showed the years on it. It was a hybrid, geared like a road bike but with the wider thicker tires of a trail bike. It was good for rough roads, sidewalks, gentle inclines, and daily commutes. The tradeoff was that the longer gears and heavier tires made it harder to ride than either a road bike or trail bike, requiring more leg strength to push the pedals. It was bright white, with a brown leather seat cover and black rubber pedals.

Danny looped the chain until it fit into his cargo pocket, buttoned it closed and swung his leg over the bike to take the saddle. He had very long legs, which gave a long pedal stroke and required tires so large they were hard to find, fully 30-inch diameters. It added to the difficulty of the pedal-push, made it harder to start from a stop, but gave him more top-end speed on the straightaways. And, the harder it was, he reminded himself, the better a workout it was. He pushed the toe of his shoe into the strap, and pushed down, easing out into motion. He fit his other foot in and picked up some speed, let himself lose himself in the ride for a bit.

He didn't have a lot of hair for the wind to blow through, but the exhilaration of blood pumping and swift movement was a rush of its own. He kept to the sidewalks, since drivers in Brockton Bay couldn't be trusted not to aim for the cyclist and crowd him off the road. As long as he stayed clear of the Boardwalk the pedestrians on the sidewalks were not thick enough to impede him. But stopping at the red lights was a pain. It seemed like every time he got up to a good cruising speed, he came to a red light and needed to stop, put a foot down, wait, and then start again. He let himself grunt with the exertion of starting, Tallboy his trainer encouraged him to use a "focused exhale" to help his effort. Much like the way that swearing can increase one's pain threshold, grunting and gritting teeth can increase one's effective strength and stamina. Tallboy was full of tips like that.

The most annoying part was sitting still when he could see the gaps that he could slip through. The way was clear, there was nobody coming, but the light was still red. After being on the bike for a week he had realized something important about them: they have much better visibility than the cars around them. It was easier to judge where the cars were and how fast they were traveling, much easier to see and know where it was safe to go. In a car, there was more guesswork, more trust, on the saddle of the bike he could look and see where it was safe and where it wasn't. And that just made it harder to be patient at unnecessary stops.

He was panting and sweating when he got to the Union Hall for the Dockworkers' Association. His bike was the only one chained up at the rack outside. He mopped at his face as he pushed open the front door, waved to the receptionist, and made his way to his office. He dropped off his backpack behind his desk and reached into the wardrobe for a fresh pair of slacks and a clean button-down shirt and a towel, then he carried those to the small shower at the back of the building. He pulled his flip-flop shower shoes from the locker there and stashed his sweaty clothes inside, locked with a combination. He showered down, applied deodorant, and dressed up in clean dry clothes before he went back to his office.

But while he was under the chilly spray of the water, he was somewhere else as well. He was in the sewers that ran underneath the building, exploring in the dark. He was in the storm drains that ran alongside them, scavenging for anything useful or edible. He was in the long grass of the vacant lot across the street, gnawing open seed clusters. He was in the basement of the building, hunting cockroaches. He was in the walls of the building, grooming for lice and ticks. He was everywhere that a rat or mouse was, for two blocks in every direction. He was even in the bottom drawer of his desk, a spacious cabinet that locked from the outside. A small hole was gnawed in the bottom of the drawer, just wide enough for the power cord to a laptop. The five creatures opened the latches to their cage with complicated maneuvers and coordination, then swarmed out in concert. They opened the lid to the laptop, and took positions. Four rats' eight paws rested on the home row keys of the laptop, one was positioned next to the trackpad, and five pairs of eyes stared at the screen. They typed as fast as a trained man, and they read several times as fast. Danny could take in far more information through his power than he could through his own senses. Their vision wasn't very sharp, but adjusting the settings on the control panel had raised the default size of text enough that all four rats could read easily and comfortably. So while he took his shower, he was reading his email and taking notes on how to deal with incoming situations.

As far as his coworkers were concerned, he never seemed to be at his desk but he was working harder than ever, on top of every situation as it developed.

In the afternoon he had some interviews to take care of, four young prospects that wanted to work the docks and join the union. It was all the qualified applicants they'd gotten all week, the Dockworkers' Association got less and less interest as the years went by, the docks all but closed down. For each of them he gave them his full apparent attention, holding direct eye contact and speaking earnestly to each of them during their interview. Normally the hard part of interviewing was getting as much authentic information as you could from the subject and still take adequate notes for the future. Four rats in the drawer took his notes for him, detailed and full-formed by the end of the interview. And one of the rats from the basement followed his instructions, crawled up through the air shaft to sneak up to the vent right beside the seat that the interviewees sat at. A few sniffs could tell him as much as many probing questions.

The first was an earnest young woman, just out of high school, the daughter of a dockworker who had heard about the job from her father for years. The rats sniffed her, she was healthy and strong with a clean smell of soap. Danny wrapped up that interview quickly and assured the kid that she had a job starting Monday. The kid gave him an effusive thanks and a handshake that nearly crushed his knuckles, the girl had more than enough strength and energy to keep up. The second was a strongly-built young man who had two semesters of college behind him and no degree, with a brooding look about him and shifty eyes. Danny pressed the questions, asking about college and why he had left, and the boy grew evasive. The rat's nose could pick up the acidic tang of stress-sweat, and the sound of a heartbeat speeding up irregularly, both of which Danny had come to identify as signs someone was lying or covering something up. The rats in the drawer hit the search engines, looking up details, and in minutes he had unearthed the fact that the boy had been accused of sexually harassing a classmate.

Danny leaned forward, his elbows thumping on the desktop as he placed his hands flat on the tabletop. "Jeremy, the people at your school said you did some things. Some improper things," he pressed. The boy's heart rate revved hard, and he was sweating anxiety into the air so strongly that Danny was surprised his human nose couldn't pick up on it. "Now, I need to hear from you whether you did those things, okay?"

The boy's face fell in disappointment, and Danny had to imagine that the boy had heard that question a few times already. "No, I didn't," Jeremy said, dropping his eyes and sighing. His heartbeat leveled out and his skin surface ran clear, the boy was telling the truth and resigned to not being believed.

"I believe you," Danny said, and the boy's eyes snapped up. "But you know you're going to work hard to put this behind you, work hard to get the life you want with this hanging over your head, right?" Jeremy was given a probationary status, allowed to earn his way into full membership. Danny thought the kid could thrive with the right direction, or may fall into the habit of quitting out when the going gets rough.

The third was a skinny kid whose father had worked the docks for years. Danny knew the kid's mother and father from block parties, barbecues and bar crawls going back a long way, both big burly folk with great attitudes and strong work ethics. Their son was a chip off the old block, genial and earnest. But the rats smelled something on the boy. Not a lie or fear or anger, but a dark wrongness in him. The kid was sick. He was not skinny because he had skinny genes like Danny, he had burly strong genes from both his parents but something was wrong in the kid, and it was going to kill him. Soon, by the signs of it.

The questions boiled in Danny's brain, the right move or the wrong move. Would telling the kid now help him, or rob him of his last few good months? Would he have a reasonable chance of survival if they got him immediate care? Would it be worth giving up his secret identity right here right now in this room? Would the union's insurance be able to help the kid? Would it be fair to the union to hire this kid knowing that he was going to cost them money and not be able to work for a long time? What was the right answer? What combination of loyalty and mercy was the right amount? Who should he be protecting?

He wrestled those questions for a while, even as he asked all the standard questions. Finally, he nodded. "Okay, Tomas, you got a lot of what we like to see. But I'm gonna need a clean bill of health. Go get yourself checked out, your parent's PPO should cover a lot of tests and stuff. Have them check you out for infectious diseases or blood-clotting issues, and we'll have you on the job." He grabbed his notepad and wrote on it _infectious disease, blood clot factor_ , and tore off the page and handed it off to the kid. Hopefully the kid would go straight to the doctor and the doctor would recognize the early stages of leukemia in time for treatment. Hopefully. Danny tried to ignore the fact that he was playing odds with a young man's life.

The fourth interview should never have gotten past the application process, it was a teenager with a low forehead who had gone through a string of dead-end jobs, six in the past year, including a run-in with the cops when he was suspected of being part of the ABB, the local gang known as the Azn Bad Boys. Danny was still not sure why anyone would contract "Asian" down to "Azn", especially if they were trying to inspire fear. But that was just part of why Danny didn't think like street gang members. The boy started asking some questions like what day of the month the Union collected dues payments, whether it was cash or checks or deductions, things like that. Danny shut down that line of questioning early, put off by the sketchy teenager's behavior. The rat in the vents breathed deep, getting a strong sense of the teenager's body scent. Then Danny showed the kid to the door.

In a minute the rats had already finished the last of the four interview notes and sent them off, explaining his reasoning for hiring one, putting one on probation, sending the third away for a physical and denying the fourth outright. Multitasking had saved him at least an hour, maybe two. He set aside the last teenager's information, and emailed it to himself so he'd have a backup copy of it.

He paced around the room while ten paws and ten eyes checked his email and responded to requests for information or updates to event scheduling. His role was partly in hiring, and partly in relations. He was a spokesman for the members as well as being one of the gatekeepers to membership, which meant that he knew pretty much every dockworker in the city, a number that dwindled slowly. Dockworkers were a stubborn breed and they held on long past the point that other folk might have left to find a more fruitful line of work, but as industry in the city slowed down year by year, there was less and less work and more and more of the union members were forced out to either relocate to some other city or retrain for some other job. So a large part of his job, more every year, was in finding ways to get the dockworkers back on the job and revitalize the local industry.

Brainstorming and consulting on that project was one of his driving goals, nearly an obsession. The closet of his office was full of blueprints, maps, folios, binders and manuscripts from various proposals that had some merit, but not enough interest from those who had the power or authority to make the changes. But over the past few months, he had started to think about alternative solutions, answers for this current age and not the previous generation. Answers from the superhero community. He'd been thinking about it more and more since Taylor's breakdown, since his visit with her in the hospital, since his trigger event, since he'd gained superpowers to control rats and mice.

And the Protectorate had been a presence in the city of Brockton Bay for twenty years now, while the city slowly declined. While wealth inequality got worse, while unemployment went up, while street gangs flourished. It was clear that they were not going to take action to save the city from its real issues, preferring to patrol the rooftops until a supervillain struck and they could fight. But he knew that the best way to get a suggestion through to people like them was from the inside. He would make himself a superhero, and then he could get the other heroes to help him. Supergenius tinkers, reality warpers, empaths, celebrities, they could get a lot done that would help people. But it wouldn't be easy, he couldn't come to them as a supplicant begging for their attention, they'd tell him that they would 'consider' his proposals, like the mayor, the city planner, the bank manager... And he couldn't come to them as a junior member and wait ten to twenty years for them to integrate him well enough to take his proposals as the words of an equal. No, he needed to short-circuit the process and make them listen to him now. It was the only way to protect all the people and save the city from itself.

* * *

He shook his head, and stepped away from those intrusive thoughts. He stepped out of his office and went to visit Barry the treasurer, and his little friend in the vents slipped out into the crawlspaces and kept pace. The rat's nose picked up more traces of the fourth interview subject, the teenager who'd been busted as a possible ABB member. The teenager had been snooping around Barry's office. Danny wished he could manage to be more surprised than he was by this.

Barry looked up. He was a towheaded guy in his thirties, with the shoulders and wrists of a stevedore and the paunch of a stevedore sitting a desk job. "Hey, Danny. What's up?"

"Eh, one of my interviews went astray, have you seen him?"

"Asian kid, about yay tall, eyebrows way down here?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Yeah, he was here. Couldn't find his way around, had a lot of questions."

"Thanks Barry. Hey, how are we set up for Wilma's baby shower?"

Barry scowled at the numbers in front of him. "It's not good. The budget doesn't have any fat to trim, you know, I can't just move some numbers around. I'm squeezing blood from stones here. But I swear on the grave of Jason Cecenovska, my third grade bully, that I will find a way to throw her a baby shower. It's hard to find outside funding, and hard to hold a fund raiser without hurting our respectability as an organization."

"Yeah, I know," Danny said, scowling slightly along with the other man. "Still, you're the best, you'll figure it out."

Barry snorted through his nose. "Don't you forget it. Are you up to anything new?"

"Petitioning the governor to call in the Army Corps of Engineers to clear out the Boat Graveyard," Danny replied.

Barry rocked back in his seat, eyebrows climbing. "Is that ambitious, or desperate?"

"I'm hoping it doesn't come off as desperate," Danny chuckled, and then walked away. He went back to his office, made sure he had finished up everything that needed done for the day, and then he unlocked his bottom desk drawer and guided the five rats inside down through the air vents to join the others in the basement, then he had some of them scent mark the air vents with a pheromone to encourage them not to explore into it. He changed into some riding clothes and walked out, locking up behind him. It was only a half-hour early, not conspicuously early. At home he locked the bike into the garage, sitting where the car used to park, a handful of repair tools scattered about nearby. He skipped the half-broken bottom step and let himself into the house, locked up behind him.

He grabbed a quick shower, just enough to get him clean and relaxed, then he picked up his cell phone. _Taking a nap. Got a mission tonight._

 _Costume finished?_ Taylor texted back.

 _Not yet. But won't need it tonight._ He dropped the cell phone onto its charge station and dropped his head on the pillow, and three hours later Taylor was shaking him awake.

"Huuuuuuuhhh?" he mumbled, his eyes gummy with sleep.

"Sundown, and suppertime," his daughter said. "C'mon, get up and get something to eat."

"Nothin' too heavy," he said, mostly coherently.

She took his hand and helped him up out of the bed. "Nah, baked potatoes. Starchy carbs to slow-release through the night so you'll have an even supply of energy until you come back," she said. "C'mon, you get fed, suited up, and then I'll be here to run dispatch."

"You should sleep, got school tomorrow," he said, coming into the kitchen to find the potatoes baked, slashed open at the top to let out the billows of steam that melted the butter across the tops of them.

Taylor shook her head. "If I was the superhero out on patrol, you'd worry yourself sick. Well, I worry too. So I'm gonna be right here on the phone, talking to you the whole time. If I tried to sleep I'd just lay awake worrying, so if I'm gonna be awake I'll be doing something useful," she said. Her tone was stubborn, brooking no argument.

"Fine," Danny said. "But no costume tonight, I'm just investigating. Snooping. And a middle-aged man on a bicycle in the middle of the night is less conspicuous than an armored superhero on patrol in the middle of the night."

"Fine," she said back to him. She paused next to the basement door, and quirked an eyebrow. "Are you doing that?"

Danny sprinkled chives over the potato set at his place. "Oh, yeah, I've got them working right now," he said, nodding. "Don't worry, I'll lock them out again before I leave."

They ate with little more than small talk, and then he cleared the table and cleaned the dishes quickly while she laid out her homework on the table in their place. Then he opened the basement door and walked downstairs. The cellar was a hive of activity, rats bustling everywhere. A couple dozen were busy finishing a painted map of the city across one empty wall, working in concert to manipulate paintbrushes and cans of paint to draw in streets and buildings with fine-tipped bristles. They clung to the wall like acrobats, claws dug into the concrete while they worked. In the center of the room was a fresh new bike, gleaming from the showroom floor, done in black, with a few pieces of black-painted balsa wood laying at its side. The balsa had been chewed into the right shape, everything measured by tiny paws and claws. The block of wood on the table was not balsa but hardwood oak, a massive slab that had been part of a tree that nearly took out Kurt's garage before the guys got together and chopped it down. The oak had been gnawed down to shape as well, but this shape was being fitted to a nearby mannequin, the two pieces of oak fitted to the front and back of the humanoid figure to fit as a front-and-back torso armor as well as a separate full-face helmet. The large block of oak was sitting nearby, making a set of wooden armor had only used up a third of it. On the end of the workbench was a pair of rats with a piece of chalk, taking notes on a small blackboard that was labeled "Patrol checklist". Others were pushing a hand-broom and a dustpan around the floor, picking up dust and splinters and tufts of fur. There were no droppings, any such business was taken to the garden in the backyard. A sink on the side wall was filled with warm water and a lather of soap, and there was a constant ring of rats using it as a hand-wash station, cleaning themselves before returning to work, moving smoothly so that none of them bumped each other, delayed each other, none of them needing to wait a turn or rush through the job. Clean-pawed rodents were tugging laundry from the dryer into a hamper, and then pushing the hamper up onto the back of a couple dozen more that stood in formation, making a living platform. They scampered off while more animals moved wet laundry from the washer to the dryer. More rats ran about in the rafters, stringing electrical cord and ethernet cable from one side of the basement to the other in seconds what would have taken a workman hours to do. In a corner a squad of rodents was patiently sorting, collating and stapling information packets for the Dockworkers, working with a speed and efficiency of three motivated file clerks.

Danny and Taylor stepped to the side as the laundry hamper scampered up the basement stairs and veered off towards the bedrooms. "I still don't want them in the kitchen," his daughter reminded him.

"I know, don't worry," he said, chuckling.

She looked around at the bustle and business of the basement. "Still, it looks really good. That painting came together faster than I'd thought," she said, gesturing at the city map.

"I made that my big priority," he said. "I kept most of my manpower on that since I started it. And the fine detail work, individual buildings, street names, I cheated a bit. There weren't enough brushes, so I just got some mice to dip their tails in the black paint and hold still so the rats could use the tails to draw or write. I'm just now starting to move my attention away from it and the armor, as you can see," he said, gesturing at the cable-crew in the rafters and the chalkboard-checklist. "I've got a fair bit more to do, but the rest of it should all come together quickly, it's just a dozen small short projects."

She shook her head, and her black curls bounced around her cheeks. "I still can't believe how you can do this. So many things at once, such precision and coordination. The multitasking is really the most impressive part of this. Controlling rats? That's not a big deal. But controlling this? That's something else." She paused, and looked around. "Did those rats come down yet?"

"They're not done folding," he said absently, as he pulled a crate of unsorted papers into the corner for the rats to sort and staple.

She made a face. "Dad, we're going to have to talk about you setting your psychically-linked henchmice to fold my clothes, okay? That's just a bit too much."

"You're probably right," Danny conceded. "Okay, I'm going to get changed and get my bluetooth, and I'll brief you on the rest while I ride, okay?"

"Sure Dad," she said, stepping aside as a dozen rats stampeded back down the stairs to start new assignments, then she and he started walking back up the stairs. She sat at the dining-room computer and booted it up while he changed into cargo shorts and a tank-top, athletic socks and lightweight sneakers. He picked up his prescription goggles from the bedside table, cycling gear that worked as well as his glasses for correcting his vision. A couple of bandannas in his pockets, and he fit the bluetooth attachment into his ear while he dropped the cell phone into his pocket and buttoned it up tight. He laced his sneakers up tight, and then walked out of the bedroom. He paused, staring at the back of his daughter's head a minute while he collected his thoughts. So many people he had to protect, but especially her.

"You're staring. And lurking," Taylor pointed out.

He laughed under his breath. "Guilty on both counts. C'mon, give me a hug before I go."

She did, him leaning down to let her wrap up around his shoulders. Her shoulder dug into his throat and he didn't care. She felt so small in his arms, her ribcage narrow and delicate. He let the warmth of her body seep into his for a minute, then they disengaged. "All right, I've got the bluetooth in, I'll call you before I'm out of the garage. Just put me on speaker and you can run ops from here," he said. "Keep the phone with you, even if you're going to the bathroom or the kitchen. Okay?"

She snorted derisively. "I'm sitting at home. Why are you acting like you're worried about me?"

"Dads worry," he said, smiling, and then he cleared his throat before he got too sappy. "Okay, I'm out, just a voice away though."

In the garage he picked up a painter's mask and tucked it into a free pocket, and strapped on the goggles. He opened the garage door, wheeled the bike out, closed and locked the garage door, and then dialed Taylor.

"Operations control, my name is Taylor and I'll be your dispatcher for this patrol," she said, with prim professional efficiency.

"Very funny," he drawled out, as he threw a leg over the bike and set the pedals. Her voice in his earpiece came through loud and clear, seated firmly and clipped gently to the arch of his ear. "Okay, if you open my email you'll find an address that I emailed to myself. I just want you to confirm it for me real quick." He could have been worried about neighbors watching, but he had a dozen field mice on lookout duty that helped him be sure that nobody was paying attention to his comings and goings.

"I've got it. 922 Lost Way, it's off Duke Street just north of Handler. I can navigate you in."

He nodded, then reminded himself that she couldn't see it. "I'd appreciate it. Pushing off now." He stood on the pedals and rolled out, gathering speed as he left the driveway and exited onto the street. Behind him, rats finished up their various tasks and began streaming out through the coal chute. The last of the cable-crew ran back to switch off the lights in the basement, others emptied the dustpan into the garbage can. The last dozen of them mustered at the entrance to the coal chute and then worked together to wedge the lid closed, setting the latch that held it shut. Then they each squeezed out a spray of urine, tainted with the musk of a territorial challenge and danger so that no more rats would try that entrance while Danny was out of range.

"So what's the mission?" Taylor asked in his ear.

The rats poured out of the house, the yard, and dove down into storm drains and the culverts that led down to the waterside where a hundred nooks and crannies made good nesting sites. Danny paused a block away and set the painter's mask on over his mouth, then covered it with a simple brown bandanna tied up like a bandit's mask covering him from the bridge of his nose to his throat. "It's a kid that I think was casing the union hall for a burglary. I'm gonna shake him down for information and try to find out what the plan is, where and when and who," he said. The other bandanna, also brown, went over the top of his head, tied like a do-rag.

"That sucks. The union has enough troubles without some bums swiping the entire budget," she said.

"Well, I think the guy is with the ABB, so not just a bum," Danny replied. The painter's mask kept the bandanna from muffling his voice too much. "So, that's why I'm being extra-cautious. I don't intend to get without a block of trouble, out of sight the whole time." He started pedaling again, now that he was better-disguised.

"Dad, the ABB has supervillains in it. I've read up on these guys, they're no joke at all. The leader, Lung, he's fought Endbringers to a standstill, and he's got supersenses of his own. You need to be really, really careful around this, you're not the only one who knows more than he's supposed to. And he's got two lieutenants, a teleporting assassin who creates expendable clones of himself and a tinker whose specialty is bombs. The ABB may not be Empire Eighty-Eight, but they're not just some street gang that you can mess around with!"

Danny used a couple mice and rats to scout ahead, watching his path for traffic or other issues. He blew through a red light and it felt great, building speed instead of stopping. Only a couple of cars in sight, and none heading his way. "Got it, thanks for the warning, dispatch. It's not like the seventies, when a bunch of punk kids would get themselves a name and a hangout and start wearing the same colors and acting like criminals. The Bloods, the Crips, Kings, those were the days. Sure, they were shooting people and stealing stuff, but the cops could act against them without having a bulletproof monster attacking them. These days the only gangs worth mentioning are all led by villains."

"Don't do that Dad, I hate it when you get nostalgic for life before the capes."

He sighed wistfully. "It was so great, the only thing that made anyone better than anyone else was just money. There were no villains, no tinkers, no-"

"No Endbringers."

"Morbid," he admonished her. He pushed himself harder, speeding along the sidewalk. "But yeah, none of that stuff. Back then, when we read a comic book about superheroes fighting villains it was just a fiction you could put away when you were done with it."

"And you're one of the lucky ones that got powers," she pointed out. "Think of all us poor helpless mortals, how we feel."

His radius of effect moved with him, a wide-ranging circle of awareness and control. He could feel two blocks ahead, each rat and mouse that entered his sphere. Where they were, what they were doing, everything they saw and smelled and heard. He was instantly in control of their muscles, thoughts, instincts, even parts of their biology that were more basic than instinct. He had experimented and he could put females into heat out of their cycle, he could start a hibernation, and most importantly control their pheromones and other chemical communication, which gave him a limited ability to control and direct them even without his direct intervention. "So Taylor, tell me about school. Did the principal act like a jerk? Did she try to get revenge like you thought?"

"No, nothing like that," Taylor said. "But, an hour after you left a mouse peed on Emma's shoes. I don't know how it's your fault, but I know it's your fault."

"I was miles away, airtight alibi," he said. In truth it only took a small amount of pheromones to get other mice to respond to a challenge of territory.

Her voice was doubtful, but still amused. "Don't overdo it, okay? If anyone notices that mice keep bothering the people that bother me, they'll draw the wrong conclusions. Anyway, band practice didn't go well, I may get dropped to third chair flute. I've just been having a hard time getting enough practice in, and Hector has really been pushing to take my spot."

He swerved to avoid a patch of gravel that washed down from a construction site onto the sidewalk and dried in place there. "It's about time management, Taylor. Remember, we've been reading about this? Practicing this?"

"I've been practicing helping you," she pointed out. "Not the same thing."

The street lights flickered on, one by one. "Hmm, maybe I've been putting too many demands on you, and not helping you out enough in return. If so, I'm sorry about that," he said. "I've just been preoccupied lately. And you've been a huge help in putting this together. I would hate to be doing this without you, or worse yet in spite of you. I'm not going to be Peter Parker, hiding my powers from my own family. I might keep a secret identity to keep you safe, and so I can keep working at the Dockworker's Association, but keeping secrets from family is just a terrible idea."

She heaved a sigh. "Fine. Okay, already. In sixth period, the vice principal came into my class on some pretext, and then made each of the girls in the class line up for a fingertip-check to make sure everyone was in dress code. It was humiliating and ridiculous. Everyone but me. He told me to stay seated and specifically called out everyone else. So all the rest of sixth period everyone was glaring at me, whispering, accusing me of getting special treatment."

Danny rode in silence for a minute. "Seriously? Holy shit that's juvenile. I think your principal has been spending too much time around high-schoolers, they've gotten into her head. Sounds like she's totally willing to turn this into a vendetta though."

"Just let it go Dad. We can't even argue that they were singling me out for abuse, because they specifically singled me out _against_ abuse. They conspicuously treated me better than everyone else, which is the opposite of proof that they're trying to violate the terms of the court order."

"They need to be called out, they need to understand that this sort of crap is at least noticed," Danny argued back. "Hang on, I'm crossing Handler now. Got my eyes open for Lost Way."

"It'll be on the left," Taylor said into his earpiece. "Hang on, 922 is close to the corner, you should be able to pick out the house without even leaving Duke."

Danny slowed, stopped. He was on the opposite side of the street from the turnoff onto Lost Way, and he didn't even look in that direction as he put down his kickstand and began a meticulous inspection of his tires and gearchain. Meanwhile, mice swarmed through the back fence and approached the house. It took a few minutes for rats to make their way up through the storm drains to this address. The light was fading, and the dark-furred creatures could slither out into the open and approach the house. Definitely the right address, he remembered what the Asian teenager had smelled like to the rats back at the office. A housemouse found a crack in the brickwork almost a half-inch across, and squirmed into it. The flexible skull compressed to get through the gap, and its joints slid to fit through the space. With time and effort, a mouse that size could squeeze through a quarter-inch gap, half-inch was easy. It wriggled its way in until it hit the fiberglass insulation in the walls, and he navigated it up and around until it an exit through the cabinetwork under a bathroom sink. A few minutes of sniffing around, wriggling under doorframes, and investigating showed him a menopausal Asian woman, a noisy cockatiel, and an empty bedroom decorated for a teenager.

The rats at the front yard took point, sniffing around to find the most recent trace of the boy, sniffing deeply to acclimate themselves to the sneakers he was wearing, trousers, everything. An astounding amount of rat DNA was coded for their sensory organs, almost 10%, and they were well-evolved for those senses. Matched to a human being's understanding of the world and abstract ideas, plus superhuman communication, it was a very powerful tool. He started pulling rats up from out of storm drains up and down the street, searching for traces of the teenager.

"The house is empty," Danny said low enough that only Taylor could hear him. "The trail leads east, into the Docks.'

He was remounting his bike when Taylor responded. "Bad neighborhoods. Watch yourself very closely, stay out of any trouble. Check in block by block."

"Hey now, I'm the dad and you're the daughter," he retorted, as he rode off in pursuit of the trail. Rats swarmed up the ladders of sewers to sniff around the manholes from underneath, searching for a single specific scent. Field mice hid in tall grass but crept near the sidewalk to smell for a trace. Rodents in walls went on high alert to find the evidence. And Danny followed the trail, all the while appearing as nothing but a bandanna-masked cyclist, oblivious to the increasingly rough neighborhoods he was riding through. The good news was that the worse the neighborhoods got, the more eyes he had to watch his back and check his surroundings. He moved rats and mice to the open, to windows or rooftops or high vantages so he could watch everything from every angle, and he could see everything, hear everything. His perception and awareness became incredibly rich, a two-block radius of near-omniscience. And as he left an area, the rodents returned to normal behavior, none the wiser.

"Crossing Delphine. Crossing Glazer. Hang on, I've got a hit," Danny murmured. "An arcade on the east side of Buckingham, just north of Rockway. The place is called Mischief Night Arcade."

"Searching," Taylor said in return. "Huh. Not a lot to find. I'm not a hacker. I've got a phone number for them, some interior images. Not even a name for the owner."

"Keep checking," Danny said. "Try finding articles from the Brockton Times." He slowed and stopped again, pulling into a narrow alley. There was nobody lurking further back, and nobody on the sidewalk for half a block in any direction. The rats underneath Mischief Night started working up from the basement up into the walls and air ducts. Rats from storm drains and sewers started mustering up near at hand, and small mice swarmed in from neighboring tenements and restaurants. Rodents were very good at hiding, and especially at hiding from humans. Most people had no idea how many of those animals they were in close proximity to, how many were just out of sight. But when you brought them out into the open and put them all in one place, it became an impressive display all at once. Not that these were blatantly in the open, he was keeping them in the dark and out of sight. But the sheer mass of them even impressed Danny. They scrambled up the walls as fast as squirrels up a tree, and into the ductwork and through cracks into the attic space above the ceiling.

The interior was dark, and noisy with discordant electronic sounds. The air swam with the smell of bodies and sweat, and food and hot electronics. But he began slipping his rodents into the interior, creeping along in corners and running along behind the banks of arcade stands. Staying to the cracks, the crevices, the narrow spaces, he spread them out to smell around, search around. And he got a hit.

"Dad? The only thing in the news is that apparently the place burned down October before last, and rebuilt since then. It was burned on the night before Halloween, some folks call it Mischief Night or Devil's Night. The owners were investigated for arson, but the results were inconclusive. The owner's name is listed as Jason Cheng, but there's a lot of them in the Brockton Bay phone book, can't narrow it down."

"Who rebuilt it?" Danny asked. The Asian kid from the office, the sulky brooding teenager who had interviewed with him, was hanging out leaning against a game but not playing. And the two other teenagers with him, both Asian, a boy and a girl, were also not playing, but they were deep in heated conversation. He couldn't hear a word of what they were saying, and the sounds he could make out didn't sound like English anyway. There were a dozen Asian languages spoken in Brockton Bay, and more dialects than that, and Danny could only barely tell Chinese from Japanese from Vietnamese by sound if he listened carefully. The three of them were talking back and forth, and he couldn't even tell if it was something important. All of their heartbeats were level and their sweat did not betray stress, but he could not tell more than that. He grimaced, and waited.

"Huh, the contractor that rebuilt it was Johnny Cheng, who appears to be Jason Cheng's brother or brother-in-law, this article is vaguely phrased. Anyway, yeah it sounds like this was not entirely aboveboard. How did you know to ask about that?"

"Taylor, sweetie, Daddy works in union politics, and the history of labor unions and organized crime is basically the same history. Besides, I've got a real good idea how shoddily this place was built, someone was definitely cutting costs and cutting corners. I wonder about this wiring, it is a rat's nest, if you'll pardon me saying so."

"Don't do that, no puns," she said back. "Okay, I'm going to try to search both Jason Cheng and Johnny Cheng and see if I can triangulate some more details about them."

"I've got the kid in front of me, two others with him. This is either going to be a long stakeout, or I can provoke a little action now and see which way he goes." Now that he was done riding, the sweat on his skin was starting to cool, and the early spring weather was uncomfortably cold, especially now that the sun was set and the wind was shifting, blowing in cold off the bay.

Taylor's voice was stern, again challenging the parent/child hierarchy. "Dad, you took a nap earlier just so you'd be rested for this. And you promised me a patient, hands-off investigations mission."

"Fine, stakeout it is," Danny Hebert said, moving his bike further back into the alley. A single door with no pull handle from the outside marked the wall to his left, and it only took a minute to direct a rat into the right place. It scaled the door frame, flipped the deadbolt, and pressed the push bar just enough that the door opened a crack. Danny caught it with his fingernails to hold it in place for a few seconds while the rat dropped to the ground and gave it a better push with more leverage. The door opened an inch, and he pulled it open and stepped inside without even glancing down at the rodent that had let him in. The building he was in was a hair salon, which was bad for interesting magazines to read but good for comfortable chairs. He pulled the door closed to keep the heat in, and took a seat. The front windows had burglar bars but no sensors hooked up to the windows glass, which meant there probably wasn't a security system to worry about. Even still he kept his lookouts on alert on the street to see if any cop cars came his way. "Finding anything on the Chengs?"

"Not much. Some background, some other family members, enough to try triangulating from them instead. This is remarkably more boring than I thought it'd be."

"Paper trails and old-fashioned investigations really are," he said. "Even in the digital age. I spend a lot of time like that, trying to find a bit of leverage, trying to find what someone's interests are, what angle they might be easy to push against. That, and figuring out which interviewees are actually serial killers. The trick is patience and attention to detail."

"Well, there's a ton of details," she replied. "Enough that it's getting hard to make sure I've got the right Jason and Johnny anymore."

Danny leaned back, stretched out. "I can help check that stuff out when I get home. It's not time-sensitive mission-critical information, anyway. You should probably be doing your homework right now."

"It's Friday night, I've got all weekend. That art project is turned in, so this World Issues assignment about the impact of parahumans on our world is the only major grade I've got to worry about right now. I've got a worksheet in math, two chapters in literature, and two days to take care of them. So there is nothing keeping us from a long, boring stakeout."

"I should have brought the woodworking projects with me so I'd be able to work on those while I'm here," Danny sighed. The two of them chatted for the next couple of hours, small talk and reminiscences. In the midst of their chat they mutually concluded that mint chocolate-chip ice cream needed to be added to the grocery list for this week, that Danny needed more practice with turning an omelet, and that Brockton Bay could do with a Coney Island-style amusement park on the Boardwalk.

"Like, it'd be an easy sell for the mayor because he loves the tourism dollars and the tourism dollars love him," Taylor was pointing out. "He's got more friends on the Boardwalk than anyone does. And a carnival would mean more visitors to the stalls and stores, more hotel reservations, all of that. But it also means that the local factories would start back up to make the steel and the pieces for the rides and the games, and once those have been started up I don't think the owners are going to shut down right away if there's a chance they could make even more money by staying full-time, which means exports from the city, and the dockworkers are back in business!"

"I'm loving the idea, and I'll start working on it tomorrow," Danny said, sitting up and straightening his masks. "But they're on the move. Put a pin in that and a note for me to follow up, but first I've got to check these kids out."

Taylor spoke into his earpiece. "How are you going to do that without showing your face, speaking to them? They're not going to have business cards that say 'ask me about the ABB', right?"

A block and a half away, the three teenagers were walking down the paved sidewalks in silence, hands in pockets with jackets zipped up. Danny repositioned his forces and planned his move. _Only one shot at a first impression,_ he thought to himself, and then made his move.

Rats can run at over twenty-four miles per hour for a short dash, about the same as an Olympic-level sprinter. When bunched up tightly, pushing each other forward, moving simultaneously with perfect precision like coiled springs, that speed can get doubled. The three teenagers were overwhelmed by a writhing carpet of rats that seemed to appear out of nowhere, conjured from thin air, bludgeoning into them from the side with enough speed and mass to knock them down to the ground. Furry sleek bodies muffled their screams. Tiny claws scrabbled for purchase, leaving hundreds of criss-crossing scratches on faces and hands and necks and the girl's bare legs. Snapping teeth were everywhere, scissoring through clothing, clipping through denim and zippers, burrowing in towards flesh and skin. The three rolled to their feet and ran, sprinting away without looking back. They even left behind three shoes, the laces chewed through. The tide of rats receded, slinking away into the shadows and the sewers and the alleys, except for a couple dozen that picked up cell phones, keychains, wallets, receipts, and anything else that the teenagers had on them. And those rats trotted down the sidewalk to bring him what they'd gleaned.

* * *

"It won't flip," Taylor pointed out. "You've made it too thick."

"But it's light, airy," Danny protested. "It's hearty, but fluffy, and it should turn just fine."

"Do you want to wreck it to prove that point?" Taylor asked him.

He looked down at the skillet. "It looks delicious. It doesn't need to get flipped, I guess. Maybe the next one." Meanwhile rats in the basement were laying out receipts and applying sticky-notes to the painted map of the city, scrolling through contact lists and comparing the results to the phone book's listings, and making a list of terms to look up translations for. He had already taken the information from the wallets and had his rats carry them to a public mailbox to drop off so they'd be returned to the owners. He was investigating them by ransacking their pockets, but he wasn't trying to steal from them or make them replace their ID cards. He knew as well as anyone what kind of hassle that could be.

He put a cover on the skillet so the steam could cook it through without having to flip it over. Taylor was sitting at the kitchen table, her legs bunched up under the chair while she propped her head up on her hands, elbows on the table. But the angle she had her head craned at looked awkward, uncomfortable. She seemed incredibly unaware of her own body, even for a teenager. She pushed the newspaper away. "Nothing about freak rat attacks on teenagers in the Docks area. So, that's good."

"And they're definitely ABB, so that's good too," Danny said. "I went through their deleted contacts, and almost every one of them is an ABB member that got arrested," Danny said. "And a lot of their current contact numbers are for suspected or known ABB members. So, no worries that I accidentally mugged three innocent kids."

"None of which will be discussed when we walk into the Protectorate headquarters today," Taylor said pointedly. "Super-secret identity."

He took the lid off, checked to see that it was cooked through, and slid the omelet onto a plate for his daughter, then started cracking eggs in again. "In fact, we'll be going in disguise. The cameras around the building and inside it are rigged up to facial-recognition software, I'm gonna spoof that just to be on the safe side."

They took the bus down to the Boardwalk, and walked along the quaint boulevards lined by shops that charged prices so high that only tourists would pay them. Here and there could be spotted the enforcers, a private-security force employed jointly by the Boardwalk businesses to make sure that undesirables stayed away and didn't disturb the spenders. Danny spent five bucks on a ballcap with the motto "Beautiful Brockton Bay Boardwalk" with a stylized image of the coastline. They walked along, and he casually reached into his pockets and pulled out a few sticks of gum, unwrapped them and started chewing, the gum puffing his cheeks out almost like a chipmunk. Another dip into his pockets produced a small sealed package of sticky-tack, used for hanging posters and other such uses. The wrapper went with the gum wrappers into a garbage can painted with the coral-pink, sky-blue and off-white that predominated the decorating on the Boardwalk. He massaged the sticky-tack into softness, then broke it into three pieces. He casually applied one behind each ear, propping them out and changing their profile, then the third on the bridge of his nose, massaging it on until it added a beaky hook, then Taylor handed him a small jar of zinc sunscreen and he layered that on over his nose, concealing the bluish stickum under a thick white layer. He put on the ballcap, and his disguise was complete. Just another casually-dressed tourist, protected against the sun, wearing his merchandise, taking his daughter to visit the local Protectorate offices on a Saturday afternoon in the spring.

Taylor let go of his hand as soon as they were through the door, approaching the receptionist to see who was available to speak to her. Danny slid to the side, looking at the promotional photos, listening in to the tour guide describing each of the photographed scenes. He stopped in front of the brochure rack, and browsed about. "About the Protectorate", "About the Brockton Bay Protectorate", "What to do if you see a supervillain", "I think I have powers", "How to help against Endbringers", "Jobs with the PRT". Danny picked up one of each, and tucked them neatly into his back pocket. He walked around the room, looking at the posed promotional posters, and also the blurry action shots of the local heroes fighting against some villain or another. There were even pictures of the Wards, the local team of teenagers that were training to graduate up to the Protectorate. Disturbingly, there were as many members of the Wards as there were of the Protectorate itself. He could think of three or four possible explanations, but they were all hinting at something terrible.

He looked over the roster, and tried to imagine himself in there. Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Dauntless, Assault, Battery, Danny Hebert, Velocity, Triumph.

Nah, it defied the imagination.

Not least of all because he was planning on going out in costume tonight and he still had not picked a name for his costumed identity. He had been leaning towards Pied Piper, for his ability to lead and control rats and mice, but it seemed a bit weak and he was half-sure someone out there already had that name. What was left for him? The Amazing Rat Man? The Rodent King? The Man From NIMH? On the other hand, there was a girl in New Wave whose official handle was "Glory Girl". And he knew that there was some woman somewhere whose handle was "Mouse Protector". Maybe he was overthinking this, the bar was actually pretty low.

He finally shook himself out of his thoughts when Taylor tapped him on the shoulder. "I've got what I need," she said.

"Yeah, me too," he said, smiling at her. They walked out, back to the bus stop.

He had the rats unlatching the coal chute before they'd even stepped off the bus at their stop. By the time they'd gotten to the door he had them hard at work downstairs. He paused, and looked down at the broken step. "Hmm, I should do something about that," he said, and then unlocked the door. They walked in and Danny went to scrub the gunk off his face while Taylor organized her notes for her homework. He stepped out of the bathroom to see his daughter shoving a cell phone at him, one of the ones he had acquired from the teenagers last night.

"You've got a text," she said. "Three of them, actually. Something's going down tonight."

 _Meet at Dover and Seaside, tonight 9pm_ , was all the text said. The name on it was one of the ones that Danny had traced to a low-level ABB member with an arrest on his record and suspicion of a few more crimes. The same text was on all three phones, sent at the same time as one mass text to dozens of other numbers.

"Well, damn," he said. "Just like Boondock Saints. I guess tonight's the night."

The next several hours were set aside for preparation and family time. They made some soup to eat together while rats used a bit of sticky-tack to attach a small ref flag to the intersection of Dover and Seaside on the big map. Finishing touches were put on the armor and helmet, and he tried them on for size, then set them down to get altered somewhat. He made sure his phone was charged, and brought a spare battery. A handheld multitool, a flashlight, crowbar, a few evidence bags, a small bag of latex gloves, a roll of quarters, a roll of duct tape, a cigarette lighter, fifty feet of thin rope, mouthguard, a handful of small wooden wedges, a large water bottle, and a handful of zip ties were all gathered and sorted on the dining room table alongside a large black backpack. Rats downstairs glued padding into the interior of the helmet, collapsible crumple zones of styrofoam like the ones in bicycle helmets. He gathered his winter hoodie, the thick green one with the fleece lining, and a pair of olive-drab cargo pants from the military surplus store, and a pair of black tabi slippers. Those had been a suggestion from Taylor, a kind of Japanese footwear with great traction and flexibility and a very soft sole that should make almost no sound if he needed to move quietly.

"Show it to me before you leave," Taylor insisted. "C'mon, put it on."

Danny rolled his eyes theatrically but he picked up the clothes. "Sheesh, it sure is a good thing my daughter is so excited and supportive about me being a superhero," he sighed, and then went into the bathroom. He stripped down to a tank top and boxer briefs, then pulled on the cargo pants. They were thick and thickly stitched, with extra layers to reinforce the knees and hips, making it extremely durable. He cinched the web belt down tightly around his narrow waist, and then pulled on the hoodie and zipped it up. The fleece layer itched against his bare arms and shoulders and the back of his neck. He ignored the itching and bent down to pull on the tabi slippers and cinch the ankles of his cargo pants tight around them to keep the loose ends from catching in the bicycle chain. It also made his legs look muscularly tapered, he noticed. He picked up the back piece of the breastplate and swung it behind him, then backed up against the wall to hold it in place while he fastened on the front and clipped them together. It filled out his torso a fair amount, gave him a lean but fit look, fit to his broad shoulders and narrow waist with a deep taper, and the padded sleeves of his hoodie did much the same. He slid the helmet down over his head, it was a featureless blank with a pair of eyeholes that fit to his cycling goggles, and it looked almost stonily impassive when it stared back at him from the mirror. He flipped the hoodie up, and the assembled affect was almost intimidating, in a way that the individual pieces were not. He opened the bathroom door and walked out where Taylor could see.

"Oh, that's not bad," she said, pacing around him to examine. "But it needs something. It's not superhero yet."

"It's not supposed to be superhero," he said. "It's supposed to be just protective enough in case I wind up getting in a little trouble, with enough pockets to carry the stuff I'm likely to need. I can get a real costume later when I join the Protectorate."

Taylor was already walking away, talking over her shoulder. "Hear me out, I'm gonna try something here." Danny fidgeted for a minute, trying to find the comfortable way to wear the tabi slippers, and trying not to feel self-conscious in home-made armor. She came back a minute later, carrying his olive-drab duster-cut longcoat. "Here, try this on top," she said, handing it off. Danny slipped his arms down the sleeves and shrugged it up over his shoulders while she turned down the dimmer switch, bringing the light level in the room down to what it would be on a streetlit sidewalk. "Holy cow," she said. "That's not bad. But I still think it should have some kind of motif or insignia. It's kind of generic, doesn't make much of a statement."

"As opposed to Mouse Protector?" he shot back. They had both seen her costume, with the wide round ears on her helmet and the cartoonishly stylized symbol she wore. "If it's kind of generic, that's fine for now. It lets people draw their own conclusions without committing to anything. But the real problem is that this armor doesn't give me any flexibility in my waist, I won't be able to ride the bike like this. I'm going to need something cut higher, and I'll be losing protection. Or maybe I need segmented armor. Honestly, I should just wait until I'm a member and have my own costume before I try anything like this. The bandannas I had last night worked fine."

"Just give it a try before you give up on it," Taylor admonished him. "I'll worry less if you're protected."

"I'll feel more protected riding on a bike two hundred yards away from trouble," Danny replied, pushing back the hoodie and sliding the helmet up off over his head. It seemed tighter coming off than going on. "But, I'll give it a shot. After all, the breastplate has a quick-release, if it gets in my way I can ditch it."

He pulled down a backpack from the hall closet, the backpack he normally wore for camping trips or afternoon hikes. He fitted the two plates of the armor into it, nested together to take up less space. Then the two halves of the balsa-wood shell, then the helmet and then the trenchcoat, packed in tight to keep the wood pieces from rattling or scratching each other. Then the crowbar went in, the rope, the hoodie, water bottle and all the rest of his tools. He stood in his tank top, cargo pants, tabis, and goggles, hefting the backpack. "Not too conspicuous," he judged begrudgingly. While he was packing his bag, Taylor went down to the basement to bring up the bike that was stashed there. The frame on it was white and black, and from a distance looked mostly like his regular bike. It was cut differently, angled differently, with aftermarket handlebars and seat cushion. The frame was lighter on this bike, made of hard titanium that weighed nearly nothing, but the tires were much heavier, made of solid rubber instead of inflated inner tubes, unpoppable and indestructible, but even harder to pick up speed than his regular hybrid bike. He carried it through into the garage, and gave his daughter a hug before he rolled up the door and wheeled the bike outside. She gave him a wave, then rolled the door back down and locked it behind him.

He slung the backpack onto his back and cinched the straps tight, then fit his feet to the pedals and started riding. He grunted as he started, but once he was started it got a lot easier to push the pedals. His phone rang in his pocket, and he activated the bluetooth. "Dispatch, this is patrol, over," he said.

"Funny dad, funny," she said. "Okay, I'm at the computer, following you along. Don't forget to put away the basement rats and lock them out, okay?"

"Doing it now," Danny said, as the last one latched the coal chute. "I've got my lookouts scouting for a good place to change clothes, as well as danger, unusual phenomena, and traffic situations." A block over and down an alley, a stray dog was barking at a rat to chase it away from a garbage bag full of kitchen scraps behind a restaurant. Four more rants arrived and worked together with coordinated tactics to chase the dog away, dropping down from a fence to latch onto the back of its neck until it bolted. Then the rats feasted, while the females involved all suddenly entered heat out of their normal cycle. In the storm drains two rats that were about to fight over territory instead marked their mutual borders and went about their business. Danny had read that 30% of all food went wasted, and from the senses of the city's rodents he could believe that number. Every garbage can had something edible in it, something that the rats could eat. Bruised bananas, moldy bread, fish heads and wilted celery was only the beginning, there were dented cans and expired eggs. The dumpsters often had locks and other countermeasures, but rats that were suddenly human-smart and perfectly-cooperative could overcome those easily. Where he went, the rats and mice feasted.

He rode hard, and he counted on the rats and mice in the area to give him an accounting of where was safe to ride and where was not. Tiny heads popped out of drainpipes and tall grass, over the tops of fences, giving him hundreds of points of view for everything in the region. Especially anything that could be smelled or heard. He could see breaks in traffic from a block away, and knew whether to speed up or slow down to scoot through the windows of safety, tuning all those senses to give him a super-acute understanding of what was going on around him. And any bad patches that the rodents didn't warn him about, he could just ride over with his solid-tube tires. He got up to twenty-five miles an hour and held that pace, since he didn't need to slow or stop for much of anything. He was making better time than the cars on the street that could only briefly top thirty-five and then slow back down for lights again.

And as he traveled the streetlights grew fewer, weaker, more of them broken than working, and his rodents got thicker and more prevalent. He had the street blanketed in eyes and ears and noses when he pulled over and opened the backpack. The first thing he did was assemble the clamshell casing over th bike. The black-painted balsa wood fit over the white parts of the frame, so now witnesses would describe a black bike, but any prying eyes that saw him leave his house would swear it was his usual white bike he rode. The housing also covered the gearchain of the bike, cut the wind resistance slightly and protected the mechanism from jamming up or getting knocked off place. As light as the balsa wood was, the bike was probably easier to ride with the housing in place. And it also had room for his water bottle, rope, crowbar, and evidence bags. He clipped it shut, and then got dressed.

First the hoodie, still itchy and uncomfortable. He used a wall to wedge the back armor in place, then clipped the front piece on and slid on his helmet. He flipped the hood up and then slipped on the trenchcoat. The rest of his tools were tucked into his pockets, even the bike chain went into a cargo pocket. From a small distance nobody would even be able to tell there was anything odd about him, he was just a guy in a hoodie and a coat riding a black bike, as long as he kept his head down and didn't turn towards anyone so they could see the full-face mask and helmet. He rode on, now keeping towards shadows and swerving around pools of light, popping up and down the curb as need be.

And two blocks away from the meeting grounds, he pulled over into an alleyway. He checked his phone, twenty minutes early. "Dispatch, I'm close enough," he said. "Beginning remote reconnaissance."

"You're hilarious," she said into his ear, dripping sarcasm all over the place.

The rats moved quietly, creeping out of walls and attics and cracks and drains, collecting all about the intersection. They mustered up and massed in place, and he could see and hear and smell everything that happened. "Dispatch, patrol here. There are a couple dozen people on the sidewalk. Some teenagers, some young adults. I can smell gun polish and whetstone oil. Even someone carrying a pipe, someone else a length of chain. There's a good number of them here, and I've got more convening from neighboring blocks. I'm thinking at least thirty or forty people, all told. No costumes, no unusual appearances. Hang on, gonna adjust that estimate upwards, some cars are pulling into the parking lot on the corner, there's a few people getting out of them. Looks like nobody wants to be late."

A dozen young people all murmuring to each other, mostly in English, he was able to eavesdrop easily. Most of it was griping about the weather or negotiating the exchange of a cigarette for one owed later, but one sentence stood out for him: "I heard Lung was gonna be here, did you hear that?"

"Dispatch," Danny said, fully aware that he was using this faux-formality to insulate himself from the situation. "Patrol here, on-site intel indicates that Lung is on his way. Please refresh me with Lung's dossier?"

"Sure thing patrol," Taylor said. "Okay, here we go. Half Chinese, half Japanese, leader of the Azn Bad Boys. Came to power in that gang a couple years ago. His history indicates he's been a veteran of the cape scene for a while, he fought Leviathan to a standstill during the Kyushu attack, but after that he stopped showing up to those events. His power starts at a base level and then builds when he fights, the longer and harder he fights the more his power builds. From a standing start he's got moderate super-strength, agility, durability, regeneration, super-senses, and pyrokinesis. When he powers up all of those powers grow, and in addition he grows a metal carapace, claws, and apparently shapeshifts into a steel-skinned dragon. He's even reported to grow wings. Sounds like the kind of guy you take down in one shot, or not at all."

"Thanks dispatch," the first-time superhero said. "I'll take that under advisement. I may ask you to call the Protectorate for backup, but wait for my signal on that."

"Okay, dad," she replied. Meanwhile he put his feet back to the pedals and rode on, circling two blocks north and two east, sweeping around and keeping the intersection in the outer boundaries of his power's reach. As he rode north, more rats came into his control, and he sent them scampering and running through the streets and tunnels and alleys to go join their comrades at Dover and Seaside. He paused for a few minutes when he reached his northern limits, giving the rats a head start, then turned east and started sending the rats he found there down to the intersection. He stopped when he was due north of Seaside on Dover, and eased himself into an alleyway. He kept a few dozen rats near himself as lookouts and backup, but the rest he collected in the shadows and any hiding place he could find at the intersection. Inside garbage cans, mailboxes, on top of roofs, the branches of the trees, adjacent basements, storm drains and long grass and ledges and niches. Sixteen city blocks worth of rats, all collected in one place, drawn into the open, ready to respond. Most city dwellers had no idea how many rats and mice they lived in proximity to, but the rodents had spent centuries learning how to hide, to sneak, to stay out of sight. And people that did see them tended not to talk about it over-much.

This was the most rats he had ever called under his control at once, consolidated like that. There were thousands of them, at a conservative estimate. And gathering them had taken most of his twenty-minute head start.

A door opened at the end of an alley, a steel fire exit in the back of a building facing the opposite street, and five men walked out. Dozens of beady black eyes watched the five men, taking them in. Four were wearing street clothes, that were either well-chosen off-the-rack or were actually tailored to them, and from them came the smell of gun oil and slight fear. The fifth one, in the front, was wearing only a pair of loose-fitting blousy pants and an angular metal mask that covered his entire face from his full head of black short-cropped hair to his throat. The masked man was tall, and strongly-built, with an easy confidence of a fighter in his element. Danny already knew that would be Lung, the other four men his top lieutenants.

Danny hung back, two blocks away, hiding his bicycle between some folded cardboard boxes next to a dumpster and leaving a few rats to keep an eye on it while he crouched down in the shadows and watched through the eyes of rodents, listened through their ears. But when he heard Lung clearly declare that the intent of tonight's mission was to "kill those kids", he froze in place and his spine washed with cold water. His brain switched gears. "Dispatch, this is patrol, I'm shifting the objective. Original plan was to investigate and gather leads, maybe pick up a scent trail I could use to bring down Lung and Lee and Bak-what's-her-name all at once. But I'm also going to move to stop him tonight, he's talking about killing kids. I'm gonna shut him down, and also investigate for leads."

"Don't overreach," his daughter warned him. He could hear her typing something in the background while she spoke. "Should I alert the Protectorate what's going on?"

"Anonymously," he replied.

"Got it, I just opened a disposable cryptmail account. I should get some burner cell phones, you should too."

"You can explain later how you know so much about burner phones," Danny Hebert said. "Shit, they're on the move. I'm going for it."

"Be careful."

"Nobody to get hurt except the rats, I'm not in danger," he assured her. A thousand rats shifted a few feet, and suddenly the Azn Bad Boys were surrounded, rings of glinting yellow eyes in the dark staring at them. They looked around, but all they saw was more rats, all moving in close. They drew weapons, guns and knives and chains and pipes, and Lung scoffed aloud as he called up two balls of fire into his hands.

"Dispatch, confirm that Lung has a regeneration power," he said.

"Confirmed."

"Okay," Danny said, and the rats on one side of the circle made their move. They could cross twenty feet in a second, but the way he had them stacked they could push each other and boost that speed. Stacked as deep as they were, they could cross forty feet in the blink of an eye, and a pair of chisel-like incisors bit into Lung's flesh, his heel, just behind the ankle bones, and snipped shut like a pair of scissors through a thick rubber band, hamstringing the supervillain. And then the rats linked up, paw to paw, teeth to tail, and pulled back the way they had pushed before, retracting their attack as fast as they had struck. Forty feet in the blink of an eye, back into the shadows. Lung roared in anger and turned to burn the rats that had attacked him, but his foot lost purchase and slid out from under him, tumbling him to one knee. And from behind, the rats struck again. They slithered between the feet of Lung's men, ignoring them in their attack. This time teeth closed on the tendons across the back of his knee, and then they were gone. Lung's leg stopped responding, and he had to put a hand down to keep his balance.

Danny had seen a documentary once about medieval life, and it had included the sport of bear-baiting. In bear-baiting, a bear was chained to a post while the men gathered around it with dogs. They would let the dogs lunge in to attack, then leap back. The bear was dangerous enough to kill the dogs with one swipe of its claws, but the dogs only ever attacked it from behind, retreating when it turned. It would face the dogs that attacked it last, and expose its back to other dogs. Whichever way it turned the dogs were on the defensive, whichever way it was vulnerable the dogs were attacking. And Lung was his bear.

The supervillain barked out an order that Danny couldn't make out, his voice raw, and the Bad Boys started advancing on one side, shooting down at the rats or swinging their weapons at them. Lung followed, half-crawling and half-crouching, dragging his wounded legs. Another wave of rodents snapped out like a cracking whip, snipping one of the tendons in his wrist before retreating, and two fingers of Lung's hand curled up against his palm, slowing down his movement even more. The man bellowed, and burst into flames.

"Whoa. Did you know he could catch fire?" Danny murmured.

"Doesn't say anything about it here," Taylor replied. "Guess we're learning something new."

"So is he," Danny said. Two blocks away, Lung looked up and around as a sudden deep cracking noise echoed through the street. The ABB gang members jumped back, some of them going back-to-back as they looked around for the source of the noise. And then the tree fell, aimed for Lung. The gang members broke and ran, all but the four lieutenants all sprinting to get clear as the thirty-year-old maple tree tipped and creaked and toppled, leaves streaming as they crashed down on the burning supervillain. Heavy branches beat at his head and his shoulders and his back, and he roared in frustration and burned his way through the foliage, burning the wood to ash even as it scratched him, bruised him. His ankle was just starting to heal through, and he tested half his weight on that side as he tried to pull himself through.

And then the sprinkler broke in the narrow front lawn at his side, water splashing all around, hissing as it hit his aura of flames. It puddled under his feet, dampened and darkened the pavement. Rat teeth gnawed through the pipe just as rat teeth had gnawed through the maple tree's trunk. Hundreds of rats could do the work of dozens of beavers, they were all rodents after all, and maple was a fairly soft wood. Lung cursed as he hobbled along, the water coughing up clouds of steam as it struck his fire, and his flames grew thin where they were doused. More water burst forth, he walked out of one spray and into the next, waiting for his knee to heal. Lung paused, looked up. There was another maple tree ahead, this one's branches entwined with power lines. He looked down at the ankle-deep water that was puddled nearby. With a muttered curse, he steered around that, hobbling well out of the maple's path should it fall towards him. His lieutenants hung back, staring at the ring of rats that stared at them and moved with them.

The tree cracked, falling in a rush, bringing down the power line. Lung hobbled faster, grunting as he limped along at an undignified pace. His lieutenants looked from the rats to him and back. A hydrant burst somewhere nearby, a crescent wrench operated by dozens of paws opened the valves and released a flood of water. Towards Lung. He froze, watched as the streaming water moved his direction, and he looked sideways at the storm drain just between him and it. He relaxed visibly, seeing how the water would pour down the drain and not reach him. The water reached the drain, and immediately spread from there, the drain blocked up from below. Water washed around his bare feet, while a couple dozen rats scampered forward with a downed power line clutched in their teeth. the end of it sparking where the insulation was broken.

Danny Hebert cold actually hear Lung's screams from where he crouched, without listening through the rats. The electrocuted supervillain staggered away, crawling up the maple tree to keep himself clear of the water. The branches bent under his weight, forcing him to keep climbing just to gain scant inches. The branches burned under his hands, and he shut off his flames to keep from burning the support away that kept him up away from the rising water and dangerous electricity. The rats climbed easily, staying safe and clear. Still-burning branches near him scratched at his skin, tiny cuts all over his body. And then the rats hidden in the street began to strike, cutting his Achilles tendon again, nipping through his earlobe and the septum of his nose. The man bellowed in frustration and pain, but the metal scales still did not emerge from his skin. His powers boosted the longer he was fighting, but Danny's bear-baiting tactics denied him the ability to fight. The man was being picked apart, injured, humiliated, but there was nothing and nobody to fight against and so his powers were trapped at low ebb. His lieutenants, retreating to higher ground, saw it all.

Lung finally got himself up the branches and away from the water, laying on the thick bole of the trunk. He crawled on his belly, half his limbs useless, and burst into fire again to keep the rats at bay. The tree bark burned slower than the branches, so he could ignite here without falling into the electrocuted water. As long as he could hold his fire up, he could keep from getting injured while he pulled himself to safety. The driveway in front of him was dark with dampness as he approached, but it wasn't the deep water he was worried about. His hand grazed the dark spot, and it ignited with a whoosh. Gasoline streaming down the driveway burned fast and hot, bright against his eyes, and he recoiled as his hands and face were burned.

"Hey dispatch," Danny murmured. "Lung's only immune to his own fire. If he hits a flammable liquid, he's vulnerable."

"I'll see about adding that to his write-up," Taylor answered.

Lung staggered to his feet, still burning, clutching his hands to his chest while he howled with rage and pain. He limped away, faster and faster, almost blind in his rush, and bulled through a wooden fence and into an antique store. Rats watched as the building lit aflame, and then the building next door, and the two across the back alley. Lung was throwing fire all about to cover his escape. "Lung is making a break for it, using his fire to keep the rats away," Danny said. "I'm breaking off, or he'll set fire to half the city until I do."

"Got it," Taylor said. "I'm calling fire services to let them know."

"Next time we fight Lung, we call the fire department first to let them get ready in advance," Danny said. "Oh, hang on, the Protectorate has arrived."

Armsmaster pulled up on his high-tech motorcycle, and stared around at the scene. Fallen trees, power lines, gushing water, burning buildings, an oil slick of gasoline burning on top of the spreading water. His suit was well-insulated, so he stepped off the kickstand and waded to get the power line, lifting it clear of the water and hauling it to a safe distance, setting it on top of a car with the sparking end of it hanging harmlessly in the air.

"Thanks," said a deep, hollow voice behind him. Armsmaster spun, his Halberd whipping up into a combat stance leveled right on the figure. It was cloaked, and either armored or made of something harder than flesh. The face was blank and featureless, smooth except for a pair of glinting eyes. The hood was green, and as the light-correction mode of his visor kicked in Armsmaster could see that the cloaked figure's mask and armor were made out of thick-grained wood, with only a narrow slice of flesh visible at his throat. His cloak trailed down from green to tan to brown, its spreading wings merging into a horde of rats that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see, all staring at the Armsmaster. The other man paused, caught off-guard by the sudden movement of the Halberd. "Uh, I mean, thanks for taking care of that. I really didn't know how I was going to fix that power line so it was safe."

"Some kind of urban druid?" Armsmaster asked, staring around at the rats, the fallen trees, the burst pipes. "Control over the natural world, creatures and plants?" He considered to himself that the downed power line would represent the element of lightning.

"What?" asked the wood-faced figure. "No, not... not entirely." The Armsmaster's onboard software included a vocal-stress analyzer to tell when someone was lying, and it read that answer as 'inconclusive', a rare reading for it to show. Part of that may be interference from the wooden mask, and maybe the druid had a strange vocal inflection that the software was not calibrated for. "Um, thanks for showing up, Armsmaster, but I may have called you out for nothing," the druid said. "Lung got away, and if we try following him right now he'll just keep burning buildings until we stop." Another pipe burst in the lawn, spraying water towards a burning building down the street. Overhead, Armsmaster could hear thunder rumbling as the druid called in a rainstorm to help stop the blazes. He had to wonder if wifi internet signals were an urban druid's natural element, that he could send an email to the Protectorate without any onboard computer at all. Armsmaster's onboard scanners didn't show even a smart phone signal on the man, just a regular cell phone in a pocket.

Colin, the Armsmaster, frowned and flipped the Halberd around, planting the butt of the shaft on the ground and leaning on it slightly. "Lung? He was here?"

"He was going to kill some kids," the druid said. "I'm not sure who."

Armsmaster grimaced. "Probably the Undersiders. He and they have been jockeying for this district for a few weeks. We've been interested in taking them down, but they're slippery. Teenagers, but they always seem to be a step ahead of us, or more. Might have done us a favor if you had stayed back and let Lung and the Undersiders fight it out amongst themselves. Whoever wins takes over the territory and we get the balance of power back."

"Oh, come on, you can't really mean that," the druid said, shocked. "You sound like you're conceding these neighborhoods to the villains."

Armsmaster shook his head. "It's not like that. But a power vacuum is dangerous." In the distance, fire-engine sirens could be heard approaching. "Will you be joining the Protectorate?"

"Soon," the druid said. "But first, I want to see how much I can help on my own. I've got a life, a daughter, a job, and I still need all those things. Joining the Protectorate is a huge obligation of time, and I'm not ready."

"You're not wrong at all about that," Colin scoffed, half-grinning.

"If I may ask?..." the druid let the words hang.

"Ask."

"Why do you patrol? You're a tinker, right? An inventor? Isn't your time spent better in your lab, rather than driving aimlessly around the city hoping that you happen to be in the right place when a crime happens?"

Armsmaster's mouth creased in a frown. "Not sure you want to join, but you want to tell us how to do our jobs. Look, I'm a tinker, but sometimes I need some fresh air, some time outside of the workshop."

"No doubt," Danny Hebert said through his wooden mask. "It's just a question what was bugging me. Thanks for humoring me. If I call again this time next week, will you be on patrol again?"

"Probably," Armsmaster admitted. "Saturday nights are a hotspot, it's all-hands-on-deck time, and my patrol route takes me past here."

"Super," the druid said, stepping back. The rats receded like a tide with him, as the fire engines approached. "I'll check you then. Thanks again for the backup, and the chat."

Danny Hebert walked to the alleyway where he had left his bicycle, his heart thudding painfully against the inside of the wooden breastplate. "Holy crap that was kind of intense," he said. "I was talking to a superhero. Like one-on-one, two guys on the job."

"You were kind of a dork," Taylor said in his ear. "And I think he thinks you're a snob or something, the way you were telling him to get back in the lab and let real superheroes fight crime."

"Oh, crap, is that what I said?" Danny shook his head, righting the bicycle. He scattered the rats, dispatching each of them back to where he'd found them. "I hope he didn't think that's what I meant." Behind him, fire engines plugged into the hydrants and began hosing down the blazing buildings. Between the smoke, the soot, the water, and the foot traffic of the firemen, it would take Danny's rats a while to pick up Lung's trail again, and he had been out late enough for one night.

A few blocks away he took off the helmet and armor, and pulled the backpack out of the balsa-wood carrying case attached to the bike. Removing the case itself, he tucked it into the bag, along with its contents and the rest of his costume, the trenchcoat and hoodie. When everything was packed back up, Danny Hebert pulled the straps over his shoulders and rode back home. A couple of times he thought it was about to rain, but the clouds never did open up.

And on top of a rooftop, four Undersiders sat astride two monstrous canines, gnarled beasts the size of station wagons that bore hides of horn and callus. The girl in black and purple was holding up her cell phone, calling her boss to let him know about the new hero in town.

* * *

 _Author's note: Thanks for reading. Comments and reviews are appreciated. In many ways this story will be less dark than the original, but that is attributed to inherent differences between the protagonist of the original and the protagonist of the fanfic. If I've made any obvious errors please point them out to me, I'd like this story to be the best it can be. More chapters will be posted soon._


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's notes: I'll be releasing these as I finish editing and proofreading them. The writing process goes fast, I've already written the next fifteen chapters, but it's hard to break my pace long enough to clean them up for public consumption. I don't know if you all would want me to slow my pace or just put it alll up at once, but for now I'm going to try to find my own pace._

Sunday was a slow-starting day, coffee and newspaper while bread toasted and hard-boiled eggs boiled. Taylor was up before him, the benefits of youth, and she was on the internet perusing. "No mention," she said.

"Not surprised," he called back. "The villain wasn't caught, nobody had video of the fight, nobody died, and I didn't even give a name. All the paper mentions is that there was some vandalism, destruction of city property, and that a villain set six buildings on fire last night."

She sighed. "You fought a supervillain. To a standstill, even. You hurt him bad, embarrassed him in front of his people, thwarted his plans, and chased him off. There should be some mention of the new hero in town."

"If I'm not an active or registered member of the Protectorate, I'm a rogue not a hero," Danny said, folding the paper and setting it down. "I'm lucky they didn't put that destruction of property charge on me, I'd be a villain instead of a rogue."

She made a face at that. "That's ridiculous. He was going to kill people."

Danny shrugged. "Be that as it may. Anyhow, I was going to ride over there while the weather's still nice, and see about tracking him back to his hideout. If I can get him, and his top people at the same time, it'll be a lot easier. Tackling them one at a time would be a pain, I'd have to sweep separately, find them separately, track them separately, and fight them separately. It'll be much easier to get the whole cell at one time."

"You're nuts," she said, calmly as she stood and went to the toaster, pulling out two slices and dropping more bread in. "You'll have to fight all of them at once, there's no way that's easier."

"Have a little faith in your pop, would ya?" he chuckled. "Anyway, after that I'll be swinging by Elmer's to hang out with Kurt and Lacie and Tallboy, so you'll have the place to yourself. No parties."

"I'm not going to invite people over for a party," she said. "Maybe someone else's place."

He raised an eyebrow, she cracked a smile, and went back to buttering her toast.

After breakfast he got on the bike and took a long, lazy ride around the Docks, stirring the rats as he went. It was not a major call-out like last night, more of a rustling of senses and some small movement of the rats to positions where they could smell the choke points and common walkways that were likely to hold the smell of a barbecued Lung. He split his forces into two groups: one that checked around the sites of the fires to find a trace of Lung leaving, and the other to check out the other side of the firedoor that Lung had walked through before the meeting with his gang. The building turned out to be a franchise burger joint, a step above fast food but only one step. He jotted down the name and address on a notebook to look up later, and then followed the trail back from there. It muddled a bit, but with some luck he found that it traced the stairwell to an apartment above the restaurant, a small one-bedroom with a large bed, a large television, and a small closet with some men's and women's clothing. From the skimpiness of the women's clothing, it was clear what this apartment was for. He traced backwards from there, and found a rooftop access.

 _The guy's got superhuman strength and agility_ , Danny thought to himself. _Makes sense he'd be on rooftops, leaping across the city._ And so he started re-positioning rats to rooftops, looking for the trail. He found the adjacent building that Lung had leaped from, and he also found a smell on the other side of the street that he was confused and interested by. It smelled like two to three tons of raw meat, slightly rotten, had been set down for a while and then carried away again. _Weird_ , he thought. And as more rats sniffed at rooftops, he found the smell again, and again. Another trail. Not as important as Lung, but also deserving some attention.

And then he had another surprise, another hit of Lung's scent near the fire site. Burned flesh and the trace of Lung's distinct body, down in the sewers. He followed the trail one side, and found it led to a hole in the side of a basement wall that had burned out. Danny nodded as he worked it out. Lung had moved from building to building, burning them, and then found one with a thin wall in the basement he could bash out and enter the sewers, slipping away. His stomach rumbled, he glanced at his watch, and cursed. "Dammit, six already?" he cursed, and then rode with a will back to the house. He needed to get some dinner before he headed out to Elmer's.

He got home to find that Taylor had already fed herself with some microwaved stuff from the freezer, so he warmed up a can of condensed soup on the stovetop without watering it down and boiled some rice. He mixed the two together and ate quickly, while downstairs his rats were marking the routes and paths he had made note of during the day. He used small red flags for Lung's path, with the flag pointing up for rooftops and pointing down for sewers, and he used green flags for the rotted-meat smell. Other rats jotted notes down in notebooks, recording the facts and his thoughts. He showered quickly, changed into some jeans and a short-sleeve button down shirt over a screen-printed t-shirt for the Brockton Bay Blues, with their whale-logo stylized on it. He rode at a moderate pace to Elmer's place, so as not to sweat into his clothing before he even got the night started. He carried his bike into the backyard, and there was a chorus of boozily good-natured cheers as he appeared, Kurt coming to give him a clumsy hug before he could even lock the bike up. He made a quick round of hellos and great-to-see-yous, then he headed inside to the kitchen where he found the solo cups and the keg, then came back out with a glass to make more thorough greetings and introductions.

He was in a corner chatting with Tallboy about boxing when the new girl showed up. "Hey, I know you!" the girl said. "You're the guy that hired me!"

Danny glanced over at the strongly-built teenage girl. "That's right, Sheila, wasn't it? My first interview Friday afternoon. Glad you could make it, but you shouldn't drink anything. You're underage, and the first day of a new job is a bad time for a hangover."

"No worries, Mr. H," she said. She saw the other figure, and paused. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Sheila," she said, extending her hand for a shake.

"I'm Tanya, they call me Tallboy," the other woman said, grasping the hand and giving it a good shake. "Kinesiologist, physical therapist, on-site emergency medical technician, workman's comp evaluator, fitness trainer and CPR instructor."

"But they call you Tallboy? Oh, because you're a short woman, like a big guy called Tiny?" Sheila asked. '

"Nah, it's because I've got a big can," Tallboy said, slapping at her own ass.

Sheila blinked. "I don't get it," she said.

"That joke isn't the same since the slang changed. Seriously, get yourself a good nickname early or you'll get a bad nickname later."

A couple of hours later, Danny was sitting on a deck chair on the patio, staring out at the deep purple sky that was holding onto the last vestiges of a sunset before it gave up the show to the stars and constellations. Kurt was sitting on one side of him, his wife Lacie on the other side. And Lacie was saying "It's not like we're worried about you, Danny, because we know you're tough, and good, and don't need our worry. It's just that we're, you know..."

"Concerned," her husband supplied.

"Yeah, we're concerned," Lacie finished. "You've changed, Danny, and we're not worried about the changes, just about the fact that you changed. Okay, see my sister in law Terry, she's a grief counselor. It's like her career, all she does is help people that lost someone like you lost Annette. Honestly I always thought that was kinda ghoulish, who wants to be around the bereaved all the time? It's not like a mortician whose taking care of the dead people, being a grief counselor is just a perfect job for someone who genuinely likes watching people cry, and that's-"

"Off topic," her husband supplied.

"Right, anyway, my brother's wife Terry was over at our place for dinner a couple weeks back and we all got to talking about all kinds of stuff, and Terry was talking about the stages of grief, you know? Like there's depression, and then anger, and then some other stuff, and then bargaining, and then acceptance. And Danny, you're not at acceptance, you're hung up. You're still at the bargaining phase, friend. Like you're trying to earn your wife's life back with all this bicycling eco-friendly granola hippy stuff."

"Karma," Kurt added. He had his eyes closed and occasionally made an uncomfortable sound like he had drunk too much too fast but was too stubborn to go throw up. Still, he was doing a very good job of following the conversation.

"Right, like you're trying to earn a lot of good karma so you can get Annette back," Lacie said. "And honestly, it's kind of cool, I wish more people would take care of themselves like you've been doing, and helping others like you do, and doing right by the world like you do. But Hebert, it's not good if it's getting in the way of you getting real closure with your wife. I mean, if you have to get stuck in one of those five stages of grief, there's worse ways you could go..."

"Anger," her husband supplied.

"Like anger, yeah. Or just going despondent and never moving on from that, just closing up on yourself and pulling your wounds open again and again, shutting everyone else out. Some crying is healthy, but you gotta move forward, not backwards. I don't want to tell you how to live your life, but if this karma-bargaining Danny Granola thing is keeping you from moving on into acceptance, then it's hurting you and not helping you."

"I'll be back," Kurt said, sitting upright and getting to his feet. His stomach gurgled troublingly, but he kept his composure until the door closed behind him.

"You might be right," Danny said to Lacie, mentally casting a wish for good luck after her husband. "But what am I supposed to do? If I'm lodged at the wrong stage of grief, do I just stand on a rooftop and shout 'my wife died and I accept it'? I mean, it's good advice to tell people to process their grief in a healthy way, but if I can't, what do I do with that?"

"You drink beers with your friends who care about you," she said, so serious she was almost stern. "Got it?" She held up her glass, and he tapped his against it in a plastic-cup toast, then they both drank deeply.

* * *

Monday at noon, Danny knocked on the doorframe of Barry's office. "Yo Barry," Danny said. "I've gotten ahead of my stuff, I'm taking the rest of the day for some research."

Barry looked surprised. "Gotten ahead? What about those pamphlets? I thought we were going to have to hire a couple temps for the week to get those ready."

"Nah, got those sorted and stapled over the weekend," Danny said. "The box is down by the loading dock, ready any time."

Barry hunched his big shoulders. "You got a week's worth of copy-clerk work done over the weekend, maybe two weeks' worth, and I can't even find a decorating budget and venue for a baby shower for Wilma. You're making me look bad, Danny. Fuck you."

"Fuck you too Barry," Danny chuckled. "Incidentally, what would you need for those decorations?"

Barry paused, opened his mouth, shut it, paused, opened it again to speak. "Okay, look, there's nothing I can do here that won't look bad if we get audited, and we are going to get audited. I've got no wiggle room, no discretion here. I maybe don't need a lot. We can use the meeting hall for a venue, but we need decorations. Streamers, confetti, banners, that sort of stuff. It's just paper, but it's always so damn expensive, and we're going to need a lot or that meeting hall is going to look bare and sad. You've been working miracles these last few months, maybe I can borrow one of those miracles from you."

Danny nodded. "I can sure give it a shot. How long do I have for this?"

"Two weeks," Barry said. "Two weeks to buy or make personalized banners, thousands of streamers, about two hundred pounds of confetti. We've already got balloons and tablecloths and centerpieces, we're just pulling those out of storage."

"Let me give you one less headache," Danny said. "I'll get the banners, the confetti, the streamers. It might be close, but I can get it by weekend after next."

"Thanks," Barry said, looking genuinely relieved. "Okay, well good luck on your research trip."

After a lunch, Danny got on his bike and rode down to the Docks, to pick up the trails of Lung coming and going. The scents were starting to fade after two days, and he was only able to add a few more addresses and a little more of the path that the man had taken. But with the way that both paths were dipping around north and east, it gave Danny a point to triangulate from, like both paths were leading to the north east part of the district, just outside the downtown area. He rode that direction, to try to find the destination. He mobilized the rodents, bringing them to air vents, walkways, windows, sidewalks, restaurants, anywhere that gave him access to lots of people's scents. And just as he was getting disheartened, he picked up a whiff. He was a bit surprised at its source, which he traced to the jacket worn by a man with his arm in a sling. Danny took a minute to recognize that he was one of the four henchmen that had walked with Lung out of the burger joint, one of the four top gang members. The broken arm was new. But Lung's body scent had transferred onto him.

And then the ABB gangster did the unexpected: he looked around, down low. His eyes swept the shadows, the corners, the low spaces, and they fastened on Danny's rat that was staring right back at him. The man turned on his heel and walked out of the sandwich shop, dialing his cell phone one-handed. _Busted_ , Danny thought ruefully. _Another lead I can't follow._ It was clear he needed to back off, needed to give some space, or he would bust more leads than he found. The heat was on, he needed to wait until their paranoia was died down a little. Or until they were too tired to maintain that kind of awareness. The afternoon had slipped by, and he called Taylor to let her know that he was out investigating.

"Hey baby, Daddy's out tracking gangsters. It turns out that even with access to hundreds of sets of superhuman senses, it's still kind of tough to do."

"Do you need me to run dispatch?"

"Nah. I appreciate the offer, Taylor, but you should get to your homework. I'll be checking in."

"All right Dad, but be careful, and don't stay out too late. I want to at least see you before I crash out."

Danny rode up, into the downtown district. The divide was incredibly sharp, in the space of one block the scenery changed from seedy pawn shops and closed-down laundromats to artisinal fusion restaurants and money-market brokerages. One one side of the street there were potholes and gang tags, on the other side there were freshly-painted parking lines and manicured microlawns. He rode from one side to the other, a little too clean for one then a little too scruffy for the other. He watched buildings full of executives leave for the evening, smiling at the armed doorman that watched over the premises after hours. He rode north, and stopped at City Hall. He knew the layout, there was hardly anyone in this building he had not approached with a proposal or a plan. And in many ways, this was where the real answers were, he was sure.

He sighed. The nooks and crannies of the downtown district didn't hold as many rats as the Docks, but his creatures were still here. He started pulling them together, riding a slow circuit two blocks west, two north, four east, four south, four west. The sun was setting. Blinds were being drawn. Doors were being locked. There were more vacant parking spaces than filled. The lights went out inside. The housekeepers took over, vacuuming and mopping to have everything clean for the new day tomorrow. Danny found a locked cafe with comfortable-looking seats, so he had a rodent let him in to relax while the real work began.

Thousands of rats moved in, split into two groups again. One half of the horde streamed into the city hall, staying out of sight of the janitorial staff. They flowed in through the walls, the vents, the grates, cracks, drains, even the roof, and they made their way to the records office, the mayor's office, his secretary's office, everything like that. A doze of them moved to the copy machine and swarmed up it, opened the top and readied it for use. His mind was in thousands of places at once, reading labels and scanning documents, flipping through to see what might be useful and what was just dross. When in doubt, he got a copy. Better to not make two trips. The other half of the horde stormed their way up into the executive office buildings in the area. In those buildings the rats did not search for files or disturb anything, they just checked to see which computers had been left on overnight, logged in with the screensavers running. A few here, several there, it added up. And at those stations, five rats could type as fast as his own hands and could read five times as fast. In the dozen square blocks he could perceive, there were hundreds of empty workstations. Hundreds of Internet connections, networked to printers. While the first group raided the City Hall, copying document after document, the second group was looking up anything about Lung, the burger joint, the men he worked with, the area that Lung had made his headquarters in, everything about that. Dozens of printers kicked to life, spooling out printed pages full of information. And then they moved onto the mayor, his finances, his history, his politics, his connections, his elections, his family, his vacations, his scandals, his campaign promises. Danny Hebert blitzed hard for every piece of available piece of information about the man who had run Brockton Bay for decades, winning election after election in an increasingly unpopular legacy.

Tiny rat paws stacked the pages together and dropped them into manila envelopes, and piled the envelopes into garbage bags plucked from the janitor's carts and tied them shut. And then tiny rat paws opened an upper-story window and tipped the garbage bags out to fall a dozen stories down and slam into the ally floor like informative meteors. Danny Hebert picked up those tied-shut bags of envelopes and tucked them into his backpack. By the time he was done collecting his haul from the City Hall, he looked like a crazy homeless person with filled garbage bags tied off to the straps of his backpack, the handlebars of his bike, anywhere he could attach them and still ride the bike. And then he wobbled home while rats slid down drains and out through gaps in the eaves, returning to their normal rodent business.

When he got home he stacked the envelopes high and carried them in by the armload, dropping them off at the top step of the basement for the rats to carry down and take care of. Across the basement, pages were spread out, taped down, and rats began scuttling about with highlighters and pens, making notations and unspooling yarn to connect various pages and start coordinating all the information into one cohesive piece. The envelopes were opened and emptied by quick dexterous digits that carried everything where it belonged, operating in perfect concert. Rodents worked together to hold pens and notate the margins of the pages, and assemble the picture behind the facts.

It was a depressingly prosaic picture, devoid of major scandal, Danny was discovering. No literal skeletons in the closet, no terrible crimes to confess. Danny couldn't help being disappointed, he had hoped for some proof that the reason the mayor always stymied his attempts to get the dockworkers back to work was because the mayor was being paid off by someone, or was being threatened by someone. Or that the mayor had some dark past that Danny could use to pressure him ( he didn't even think the word blackmail to himself ) to get a bit of tax money set aside to fix up the ferry and put it in operation. With the ferry working, people who lived in the Docks could apply for work in the north side, good work that could get them to move out of the Docks or fix up their own home, fix up their neighborhood, and alleviate the poverty that haunted the south side of the city.

But there was no dark hints of murdered children or massive payoffs. He had access to the mayor's bank statements going back ten years, and he was hard-pressed to find any irregularities. But at least it distracted him from Lung for the day. Tomorrow he would try again, and he had a good shot at finding the gangster's hideout. Meanwhile, he fixed dinner and talked to Taylor, learning about her day. The principal hadn't tried anything since Friday afternoon when every girl had been called out for possible dress code violations except Taylor. Monday was quiet, except for the usual shenanigans from the three girls who bullied Taylor right under the teachers' noses and the administration's blind eye.

".. and then Madeline just stole the paper for her own group and they started using those notes. I stood up and demanded they give them back, and they acted all innocent. Mr. Gladly asked me not to make a scene, and I asked him to pay attention to his own class, that they had stolen my notes. He started to say that she wouldn't do that, and I reminded him that this girl would lock someone into a pile of rotting tampons, stealing notes was nothing at all. So he made her give me back the notes, after he checked that they were in my handwriting, and then he told her not to do it again. A suspension would have been nice, or at least a write-up, but I'll take what I can get."

"We need to get you transferred to Arcadia High," he said, shaking his head. "Away from these punks and their abuse and the principal that seems to think her job is to aid and abet bullies and not stick up for the victims."

"They don't bus from here, and it's too far to ride on my own, " Taylor pointed out, sliding her glasses off to polish them.

"Well, I guess we should move closer," Danny said.

Taylor was visibly trying to repress her excitement. "Not that I wouldn't love that, but could you afford that? Could we move, start a new mortgage?"

His sigh was soft but drawn out long. "No, not right now. Maybe I could make some extra money, start phoning in that tip line that gives rewards for information that leads to arrests. I could find murder victims, weapons, evidence, bail jumpers, stuff like that. Maybe a few hundred extra bucks a week, you know? It wouldn't take long to save up for a new home closer to Arcadia."

"And further from your work," Taylor pointed out. "You'd need a new job to afford it."

He picked up his plate and carried it to the sink. He turned on the water with a hard twist of his wrist, and washed the last crumbs down the drain. "Maybe I should join the Protectorate. There's a paycheck there, better than what I earn now. I'd bunk down in the Tower, you could live nearby or maybe stay in the Wards dorms or something. And you'd got to Arcadia High with the Wards."

Taylor handed him her plate to rinse while she took his plate and slotted it into the dishwasher. "It does sound like a pretty awesome plan. But I heard what you said to Armsmaster. Most people who were trying to defend the need for a secret identity would mention their job, their friends, their job, how much those people need them, need you. But you told Armsmaster that you need your job, need your friends, need your daughter and your double life. I don't wanna get Freudian here, but I think that means something. I think you still need to be independent of the Protectorate, still need Kurt and Lacie and the union hall. My stuff at school sucks. But I can wait a few weeks, a few months even, if that's what you need. If you need to not be a Protectorate hero yet, then I'm okay. Just.. don't wait too long, okay?"

"It's March now, school year's just got a couple months to go.. I promise I'll wrap up what I need by the start of next school year," he said. "August."

"Promise," she repeated back, and stuck out a soapy hand for him to shake. They shook on suds and dishwater and teamwork. And in the basement, one rat was drawing a long black piece of yarn from one entry in the mayor's bank statement, carrying it around, trying to find the other paper it would attach to, and finding nothing.

* * *

Tuesday Danny arrived to work with a large catalog box, big and black with a leather-bound handle that rattled when he dropped the case on the top of his desk. He opened a vent to let five rats into the bottom drawer of his desk where they could operate the laptop stashed in there, and then several more to grab thumbtacks and pushpins and started decorating his big corkboard with paperwork from last night, starting with the bank statement and then other relevant pages stacked up alongside it, pinned in place. The rats rushed out before he unlocked his door and got on the phone. He started with the mayor's secretary, arranging an appointment for him to meet with the man. He had to throw in the name of the Dockworker's Association to get enough credibility to schedule even a short meeting, ten minutes between a conference call and a lunch appointment, with the understanding that the conference call might run late and the lunch might start early.

Barry swung by before lunch, and paused when he saw that the big corkboard had been redone. Instead of a dozen odd-angled post-it notes, there was now over a dozen pages lined up neatly, with highlighter and handwritten notes. "Yo, what's this?"

"Results of yesterday's research," Danny said. "It turns out that the mayor spent one-point-nine million dollars three years back on a real estate deal that didn't happen. The seller is a fake, the address is a fake, the account he sent the money to closed that day after sending him a receipt. It's not a scam, it's not legit, so what is it?"

"Could be a lot of things, but none of them are good," Barry said. "That's not a charitable donation. That's not a gift to your kids' school. It's not discrete plastic surgery for his wife, or a retainer for a lawyer. That's not a nest egg or an escape plan. Hmm. Could be a hit? A bribe? Laundering? A payoff? Insurance? Whatever it is, it's crooked and it stinks. Good catch, let's get lunch."

Lunch was standing in the park a block away eating hot dogs from a food truck, leaning against a park bench with too much hobo pee on it to sit down. Barry used his finger to even out the relish on his dog before he took a bite. "So," he said after he swallowed. "Whatcha gonna do with that information on the mayor?"

"Gonna confront him, ask for answers," Danny said, and took a bite of his own. Too much mustard, it felt like the dog was biting back.

Barry nodded. "Not bad. But be careful. You know what they say about a cornered rat."

"Yeah I know," Danny replied. "I'm gonna try to let him know how easy it would be to buy my silence: just fix the ferry, put it in operation again. That by itself would help our people more than anything he's done in his entire tenure. The idea is to put the pressure on him from one side but at the same time to offer him a way out, a nice credible answer to the problem I'm posing. That way he shouldn't get too defensive or resistant."

Barry nodded. "You really do learn a lot, sitting in on those deals and those contract negotiations, right? I feel like I could teach a class in conflict resolution just from my observations and experience, never having touched a book."

"Union work," Danny shrugged. "It's all about handling people, finding what they can give and what they need to get."

Barry nodded. "True dat. But I need to get another dog, and I can give legal tender for it. I'm going back to the food truck, do you need anything?"

"A few napkins," Danny said, nodding his thanks to the other man. He faced out onto the park, which was a bit dingy now and a bit past its prime. The city didn't spend much on its upkeep anymore, and the grass had grown long and dried out, the tree branches sunk down heavy with dead twigs. It was a good place for rats to hide, the sort of place that nobody bothered to exterminate. Which was good for him, if the supervillains he was after started hiring exterminators it would...

He paused, rolling that thought around. .. it would lead him right to their hideout. He needed to start checking buildings in that region that had been aggressively exterminated in the past couple of days. If Lung's lieutenant was watching for rats when he went out to get a sandwich, then Lung had to know well enough to keep rats out of wherever he was living or hiding or working from.

That afternoon, Danny phoned Taylor to let her know he would be late home for dinner. He rode north, and he swept the area. The rats knew the smell of poison and traps, and he started noting the buildings that had been aggressively bombed with rat poison or traps. They investigated doorways, crawlspaces, drains, kitchens. There were a variety of places that had traps and poison, he started making a list. He ruled out any that were using human live-capture traps, that didn't seem appropriate to Lung's style. He had to pull back a few times, nearly stumbling his rats into well-hidden stashes of poison. It was easy to avoid normally, but when he was aggressively seeking it out it was a different matter.

And then he ran across a warehouse that had steel grates bolted to the floor drains in the past couple days. And layers of steel mesh worked into the plumbing pipes when he sent a rat to swim up through the water line. There was no poison to be smelled, but he could smell that there were dead rats inside. Some burned to death, others raw and rotting. Danny pulled the rats back from attempting entry, and moved them up to windows, skylights, doorways, and found that all openings were blacked out, painted over, and sealed tight. Danny wrote down that address, underlined it twice, and then rode home.

* * *

Wednesday Danny worked his shift and rode home, met Taylor when she walked in the door, and they stayed home, did homework, and played some board games and watched a show until it was time to crash out. And down in the basement, rats parsed through the paperwork, setting aside a growing pile of false leads. And more rats took that stack of useless papers and started cutting them into confetti, using incredibly precise incisors wielded with the exactitude of a pair of scissors.

On Thursday he left the office early to swing past the warehouse, and began a patient assault upon it. Rats gnawed away mortar from around a brick hidden by the untrimmed grass by the parking lot. When the mortar was gone, the rats pried out the brick, and made sure it was well-loosened. They pushed back the fiberglass insulation to make a smooth path to follow, and mentally mapped out the place, finding studs and scantlings, and then gnawing a hole in the air-conditioning duct. Then they pulled back, replaced the brick, and started investigating the area around. He checked rooftops and sewers, and was able to faintly pick up signs of Lung in both places when he looked hard and paid close attention. And he was able to find much more recent traces in the parking lot, it seemed he was traveling more by car. But other traces could be picked up, and they were not nearly as careful about being followed. And on a whim, he started tracing one of those.

The trail winded down alleys and across streets, often losing the scent in the roadway only to pick it up at the other side. The path was entirely direct, and had been reinforced by repeated trips. The trail ended in an courtyard made of a widened alleyway, garbage cans ringing the place, with no direct line of sight to the street. He swarmed the rats, and was able to pick up the smell of the man on the fire escape on one side, six floors up, but not the first five floors. Danny was puzzled, but he had the rats look in through the windows, and spotted Oni Lee.

The assassin for the Azn Bad Boys was sitting in a chair, freshly showered, wearing clean plain clothes, with a briefcase open on the desk that held his white demon mask and his costume, as well as his cruelly sharp knives and a bandoleer of hand grenades. The bed was made, the floor was swept, and Oni Lee was sitting in a chair staring at the opposite wall with a cell phone in his hand. No television, no radio, no magazines or books. The rats watched, and he did not move. He breathed rhythmically, blinked regularly, and did not move at all aside from that. Danny waited ten minutes, with no reaction. Then another twenty, and in that half-hour Oni Lee did not move except to breathe and blink. Danny pulled the rats back, and went back home.

On Friday, he took the day off, having already finished all his duties for the week. He saw his daughter off to school, then he rode out. First to the warehouse to make sure his trick brick was still as it should be, then checking in on Oni Lee. The bed was still made, and the man and his briefcase were missing. The rats forced the window open and streamed in, investigated every corner, sniffed at every seam. It became more and more clear that Oni Lee spent all of his downtime here, exactly as Danny had witnessed, and that was probably the weirdest thing that Danny had ever heard of.

He returned to the warehouse and set up watch, keeping an eye on all the doors and windows, as well as the rooftop and the neighboring buildings, and the storm drains that ran underneath the building. He found a neighboring office building that let out early on Fridays, an engineering company, and he let himself in there to use their computers and a comfortable seat. He started multiple lines of investigation, sending emails inquiring about the bank account that had received the mayor's one-point-nine-million-dollar transfer, checking all available information on Oni Lee and Bakuda on the search engines, looking for news articles about the warehouse that he was watching remotely, even getting on the phone to make calls to the leasing company that had sold the warehouse, to see if they could tell him anything. Of all his investigations that afternoon, the most fruitful was the rats in the back of the building that found a giant roll of butcher's paper being thrown out, and he had them haul it out and set it up off to the side. After the evening started fading, a truck came by with a delivery that came around to the warehouse's loading dock.

Danny was not at all surprised to see a young Asian woman open the loading dock shutters and sign the paperwork to receive shipment, and then yell at the delivery men that brought the boxes in. Large boxes with complicated labels, and her voice rose from a surly mutter to a wild shriek with each bump and slip. That would be Bakuda, the mad-bomber tinker woman who had held her university hostage last year. Even if she had a full machine shop on the premises, she would need regular supplies of raw materials, probably made to exacting specifications.

And one rat, moving carefully, stealthily, made its way through the shadows while she berated the man with the handtruck, and sniffed at the woman's pantleg. It smelled Lung, and Oni Lee, on her clothing. The rat slipped back, melted into the shadows, and retreated to a safe distance. Danny went to the back of the building and grabbed the butcher's paper, balanced it across his handlebars.

Then he disbanded the swarm, sent the rats back to their homes, and rode home. At this point it was second nature for him to direct the rats to good food and away from danger, collecting a half-dozen together to lift garbage can lids. Sometimes he would find a good enough stash of food to justify sending a female into early heat, to breed an extra litter of rats here and there. They helped him, he helped them. Rats in Brockton Bay could thrive without hurting anyone or stealing any food that would have been eaten.

At home, he showered and changed, called a few friends over to hang out and drink beer and laugh together. Taylor stayed up with them well past midnight, laughing at Kurt's crude jokes and Lacie's crude impressions, just friends having fun.

* * *

Saturday he woke up late, deliberately so, in order to stay up late that night. He had his breakfast around noon, scrambled eggs and sausage with Taylor. Then he started the hard part of his day.

"No, the armor pinched at my waist and my throat. It was way too uncomfortable, and I could only get half my usual speed like that. The helmet doesn't breathe at all, it just doesn't work. Honestly, my best protection is going to be distance and speed, and I can't get those with the armor and helmet," Danny said firmly.

"But it looks cool!" Taylor protested. "What else are you going to wear, cargo shorts and a tank-top with a bandanna on your face?"

"Would it be a problem if I did?" he asked pointedly. "Last week I was overprepared and underplanned. This week I know what I need and what I don't need, so I can bring exactly that and nothing else. That means no backpack, no carrying case, and no trenchcoat. It's too hot when I'm riding, though I might go back to that look next winter."

She rolled her eyes. "It's bad enough you won't even wear a bike helmet when you ride. Now you want to fight supervillains from a bicycle without a helmet."

He raised a finger, waggled it. "Hang on, you know the statistics that helmets don't make you any safer. There's-"

"I've seen them, but even Alexandria wears a helmet, Dad," she pointed out. "And if you're a superhero, you should look the part."

"If I look the part, bad guys know who to shoot," he retorted. "If I'm just some guy in the neighborhood, I'm safe."

"And if other folks get shot because the bad guys are looking for you and you're not in costume?" she asked.

"Then that would run counter to your wishes that I don't get shot," he said. "You just reversed your argument. Look, you spend some time working on a costume and I'll look into it. Something with a look that you like, that is comfortable enough, and I'll help you out from there. But the wooden armor just needs to go back to the drawing board and the drawing board needs to go back to the store."

"That's ridiculous," she moaned.

"It is, but humor me. You pitch me some ideas for a costume, and I'll give them a shot. But for tonight, it's the bike and bandanna."

He wore the cargo pants from last week, with the tabi sock-slippers, and a nice lightweight t-shirt. No jacket, no hoodie, no gloves, but a brown stocking cap on his head, his biking goggles, and a bandanna in his pocket as he pulled out of the driveway. The rats confirmed that nobody was watching, but they were much better at seeing human observers than they were cameras. He had to be conscious that cameras were everywhere these days. He rode west, then cut north when he was well away from his own neighborhood, and took a winding path to the warehouse. He paused to pull his bandanna up over his mouth, cinching it behind his head, and then he started heading east, several blocks over, stopping when he was within range of Oni Lee's apartment. One rat ran on ahead to see if the man was in place, and several more rats waited while Danny reached into his cargo pocket and brought out the pair of walkie-talkies he had bought. The rats took one, running ahead, while he directed them.

Oni Lee was sitting in his chair, staring at his wall, when the rat peeked over the windowsill. He was still and silent, with his briefcase sitting open nearby. There was a clunk as the walkie-talkie was pushed up onto the windowsill, the rats were a bit clumsy when the angle was that bad and they had to do the best they could. The man did not turn at the sound, just breathed and blinked.

"Oni Lee," the walkie talkie said, with only a little electronic crackle. The man turned slowly, his sharp cheekbones catching the light. "Oni Lee, open the window and take the walkie-talkie," Danny said. Oni Lee stood abruptly, walked to the window, opened it and took the walkie talkie.

"Good," Danny said. "Now, turn off your phone, this is going to be your phone from now on, understood?"

Oni Lee's thumb moved, pressing the power button for the cell phone, but he did not respond further, just stared blankly at the radio in his hand. "Tell me if you understand, Oni Lee," he said. The man's jaw moved somewhat, and his breathing sped up, but he did not speak.

 _Holy cow,_ Danny thought to himself. _This guy is pretty messed up. What is that, brainwashing?_

"Put your phone on the windowsill," Danny said, and Oni Lee did not hesitate. "Thank you," he said through the radio. "Now, sit down in your chair, and wait for me to speak to you again. And don't use your powers until I tell you to," Danny added while the rats dragged away Oni Lee's cell phone.

Then he put down the radio, and picked up his own phone, and called Taylor and put his Bluetooth in place. "Dispatch, this is patrol," he said by way of greeting.

"Dispatch here, patrol," she replied, still playing along.

"Dispatch, can you email the Protectorate again and give them the address for Oni Lee's hideout? He doesn't have his phone, so Lung won't be able to call him. He's got a caretaker here, an old woman that brings him food a few times a day. She may be involved in the ABB, or she may just think she's got a handicapped lodger here, I don't know. She should be interrogated though, and not allowed to call Lung and let him know that the jig is up."

"The jig?" she repeated, amused.

"Yeah, the jig. Tell them that Oni Lee is catatonic unless he gets orders, they should go easy and treat him like a psych patient and not a supervillain. I'm going after Lung and Bakuda now, let them know that I'll be messaging them so Armsmaster can meet me there."

He mustered rats from these tenement buildings, and all the way back to the warehouse he zigzagged from block to block to cover more area and slow down his progress so the rats could keep up. By the time he got to the warehouse he was in control of nearly ten thousand rats, and he had them pry loose the trick brick and stream inside the building, hiding themselves in the walls anywhere they could. With that many ears and noses, he could get a sense for everything inside the building. The sharp rodent ears, taking in sounds from different sides, with slight delays for distance, almost gave him a sonar sense for what was inside the building. Bakuda's boots thudding along the cement floor here, the sound bouncing up against metal shelves full of cardboard boxes. She paused, and a click of a utility knife opening as she ripped open some tape and rustled inside for some cellophane-wrapped components. Lung in an upstairs office, pacing while he spoke on the phone. Four more men in the outer office, one wearing a sling on his arm. They sat away from the windows overlooking the warehouse floor, as if they were staying as far from Bakuda's work space as possible. There was a back office with mattresses thrown down on the floor, a concession to the living needs of the hideout. The back office smelled musty and all too lived-in.

Bakuda was the first target, because she was unsupervised. Rats peeled back the sheetrock of the walls in a corner and streamed out, spreading across the floor and lining up, with the shelves between them and her, keeping to her back. He arranged them into the right order, and then they rushed. A swift tide of dark-furred bodies slammed into her feet from behind, knocking her legs up into the air. A half-second later she slammed to the floor hard, no time to catch herself or soften the blow. One damp rat leaped up onto her chest and wedged itself into her mouth, gagging her from screaming, its fur stinking of an acrid chemical smell. She flailed, bringing her hands up to yank it loose, and two rats came up with her sleeves, each working their end of a set of zip-tie plastic handcuffs. She yanked at them, tried to free herself, and only dug them into her skin. She made a muffled scream and bit down on the rat's body, its bones crunching as she fought back, thrashing and struggling. He winced, shot through with guilt as the animal suffered. Her legs kicked, but they were tethered with zip ties as well. She dug her hands into her pockets, but sharp teeth nipped at her fingertips hard and she pulled back, bleeding, the jerking recoil of her hands more a reflex than anything else. And by the time she recovered from the reflexive withdrawal, the rats had opened her pockets and carried away the contents. She thrashed over onto her front and crawled awkwardly, hands and ankles bound, and she spat the dead rat out of her mouth. The floor in front of her tilted, receded, and she finally recognized the taste of the chloroform that the rat had been soaked in. She dropped in place, sprawled on the floor, and the rats began hauling her back out of sight somewhere safe.

And after that, they had the run of the showroom floor. They read labels, notes, journals, outlines, blueprints, and made their pick. The equipment Danny chose was surprisingly small, about the size of a softball, but flattened and black with a plastic housing. The rats dragged it into the right spot, then started swarming up the walls to take their places. They worked quietly, patiently, careful not to make noise that Lung might hear with his supersenses, but not so slow that he might move or leave before they were done. Beams were gnawed at, gnawed through, wooden supports weakened, load-bearing struts severed.

"Dispatch, this is patrol."

"Go for dispatch."

"Call 'em in."

The floor under Lung's feet groaned, rumbled, groaned again, and tilted. He dropped the phone and had time to yell for his lieutenants before the floor tilted and became a wall, and the whole room dropped out from under his feet, the desk slamming against his arm as the whole office dropped in place and shattered on the warehouse floor, leaving only rubble and wreckage. Lung flung himself out of the debris, roaring his anger as he glared around, and then the bomb went off. All the oxygen in a twenty-foot radius was replaced by carbon monoxide, and in ten seconds later the big bare-chested gangster was unconscious where he lay, the bad air dissipating around him. One of the four henchmen threw a mattress out the window and leapt for safety, but he bounced once on the mattress and then didn't get up again, clutching at his broken leg.

Armsmaster arrived with a contingent of PRT personnel, a big van full of restraints and sedatives to keep the prisoners under wraps until they could be given trial. He oversaw as the villains were fitted with heavy steel cuffs and IVs of anesthetic to put them into an induced coma. And an ambulance for the henchmen with the broken femur. The PRT squad leader called for backup when he saw the warehouse, all available personnel to help with cataloging and containment of this arsenal. Armsmaster was browsing over the notes when he saw a quartet of rats sitting on their hind legs, staring straight at him. He quirked a half-smile and approached, and they led him out of the warehouse and around the corner, to where a thin figure of a man was sitting on the curb next to a bike up on its kickstand. The thin man wore a stocking cap and a bandanna over his mouth, but the same pants and slippers from the previous week.

"Druid?" Armsmaster asked.

"I don't actually control nature," the thin man said. "Just rats. The costume was my daughter's idea." He reached into the backpack at his feet and pulled out a small cooler bag, then unzipped it and handed Armsmaster a beer.

"I'm on the job," the hero said.

The thin man shrugged. "So am I, I guess. C'mon, get some curb," he slapped at the concrete at his side, and Armsmaster awkwardly sat down on the roadside curb. "Did you guys get Oni Lee?"

"He cooperated immediately. He said he wasn't supposed to use his powers until the radio told him to."

Danny heaved a sigh. "Thank goodness. I was pretty sure about him, but it feels good to have it confirmed. Listen, I think he's brain-damaged or something, he's got no willpower of his own and he just follows orders. I think we can get him an insanity plea or something, right? I figure with a couple of earplugs and a radio connection to a dispatcher, we could make him one of the heroes in short order. Kit him out with a baton instead of knives, containment-foam grenades, he should be fine."

"Still ready to tell us how to do our jobs," Armsmaster said, popping the top on his beer. He lifted it to his mouth and took a cautious sip. "You brought in the entire leadership of the ABB tonight. Lung, Bakuda, Oni Lee, Johnny Cheng, Ho-wan Ho, Steve Nguyen, and Peter Pan. All that's left is a bunch of knucklehead gangbangers with graffiti and smash-and-grab burglaries."

"Please tell me that Peter Pan is the guy that threw himself out the window and broke his leg," Danny chuckled, lifting his own beer. He lifted the bottom of his bandanna out of the way and took a long drink.

"I could lie because that'd be better," Colin the Armsmaster said. "But no, Peter Pan isn't the one that tried to fly out the window."

"Nuts," Danny said, leaning back a bit. "Hey, last week when I asked you about why you go on patrols, I hope that didn't come off as pushy or condescending or anything."

Armsmaster shrugged. "Not very."

"It's just that it seemed like a second-best use of your time, is all. I mean, if you could get Miss Militia in some armor like yours, or Triumph. Or heck, Vista with the Wards. That's an eleven-year-old girl who goes looking for armed criminals, and she's wearing a fabric costume instead of hardened armor. One bad night, one good shot, and you've lost a hero before her prime."

Armsmaster paused. "It's hard to keep a suit of armor like this going. There's repairs, maintenance, calibrations, updates, adjustments. Every time you gain a pound or lose a pound, the armor needs to be adjusted. Every time it gets dinged, it needs to be fixed up. Sweat throws off the heads-up interface. It's a high-tech performance machine made with the intention of getting struck and damaged."

"And I'm sure your teammates would appreciate all that, every time they wear it, and especially when it saves their lives," Danny said gently. "Besides, the more you work at it, the easier it's bound to get, right?"

The senior hero took another swig of beer. "It's not just that, man. My power, it's not just a tinker power. My creations work better in proximity to me. The efficiency, the effectiveness, the power output, it only works when it's actually near me. That's how I manage to get so many weapons built into the Halberd. But I can't do that for the others."

Danny craned his head around to stare at the hero, his brow furrowed deeply and his bandanna askew where his mouth was pulled into an incredulous expression.

Colin looked at the man, and blinked at his reaction. "What? What's with that face?"

"Your power works best when it's in your proximity, and you think the smart answer here is to build hight-tech weapons and carry them into battle yourself?" Danny said, his voice full of disbelief. "My god man, your powers were built for full-time lab work. You're trying to overcome the limitations of what you can carry with you, and you should be solving the limitations of how much you can fit into your workshop. You could either have the most effective, efficient workshop of any tinker, or you could have the most effective efficient weapons of any tinker. I'm not a tinker, or an expert on tinkers, but I have no doubt that the first option is orders of magnitude preferable to the second."

Armsmaster finished drinking, and crushed the can between his palm and the curb. "Thanks for the beer. I've got to get back to this crime scene."

Danny stood with the other man, but held up a hand to forestall him leaving right away. "Look, Armsmaster, I've got another question for you. Or favor, whatever. You mentioned power vacuums, how the fall of the ABB could upset things here. I'm looking for some suggestions."

"Hmm," the hero said, scratching at his chin with armored fingers and thumb. "Well, there's basically three feasible options in front of us. Either the various factions of villains in this city start moving into the ABB's turf to expand their holdings, run into each other, and start fighting for the pie and break out into open gang warfare, or one gang moves in fast and hard and takes all the land by themselves, and then either the others look to challenge and you get a long, simmering gang war, or for some reason nobody moves in on the open territory."

"For example, if it wasn't really open," Danny followed along. "If they thought someone was already holding and controlling it."

"They might challenge the borders, but whoever was holding the ABB turf would be dealing with them separately. It wouldn't be a six-way war."

"Six?"

"Six or seven, depending on how the alliances shake out," Armsmaster said. "With the ABB gone, there's just the Empire Eighty-Eight, Faultline's mercenaries, the Travelers, the Undersiders, the Fifth Street Merchants, and Coil, plus about a half-dozen to a dozen independent operators."

Danny cursed under his breath. "It would only take a few weeks though, right? Take the turf, hold it, then hand it off to one of the other groups so they can take it and establish themselves without opening a gang war on all sides."

"In theory, maybe," the Armsmaster said. "But in theory, everything is easy."

"I promised my daughter I'd enlist with the Protectorate by August," Danny said. "But I've got an opportunity here. I can stop a gang war before it starts, if I just wait a little bit. The hard part is that I either need to devote myself full time to holding the borders like a supervillain, or I need to pick a supervillain faction to hand it off to. That's way too much like condoning them, or even encouraging them."

"This life is about the tough calls," the hero said.

Danny sighed. "I guess it is. How much help can I expect to get from the Protectorate while I'm working this strategy?"

Armsmaster winced. "I'm on a limb just giving advice or tacit approval to this plan. You're a rogue, technically any actions you take need to be entirely legal or you're acting as a villain. I can arrange a bit of a blind eye, but that's just me and my people, and we take our marching orders from the PRT. If Parahuman Response comes after you, or orders us against you, my hands are very tied."

"But if we do this the hero way, gang war breaks out and hundreds of people die," Danny pointed out.

"This life is about tough calls," the hero said, his voice a bit more somber this time.

Danny mulled on that. "It seems like most of those tough calls are being made by other people, or the consequences of those tough calls are borne by other people."

"Well, there's- hang on," Armsmaster said, raising a hand to the side of his helmet. He paused, listened, and then quirked a half-smile and turned towards Danny Hebert. "Hey, guy, my people doing inventory just found out that an entire shelf of finished product that was listed in the notes isn't where it should be, and doesn't seem to be anywhere. The place they were stored is right next to a big hole in the wall with a lot of teeth-marks on it. Now, that many tinker-made bombs could be a real problem if they got loose. So, since you're the only person that saw this place before we got here, I need you to tell me: do I need to worry about finding those bombs?"

"If I was making the tough call, I'd ask you not to look for those," Danny said. The mask made it easier to hold a straight face.

Armsmaster nodded, and may even have winked behind his visor. "Thanks for your advice. And... thanks for the assist." He watched the thin man get onto his bicycle and ride away, disappearing down the street. The world seemed to rustle as hundreds of unseen rats slid back a little further out of sight, leaving the warehouse to the PRT.

Soon Danny was three blocks away, being scolded by his daughter. "He thanked you for the assist, dad. Not the way you beat the ABB singlehanded, he called it an assist. He's gonna take credit for this, and the leverage you wanted in the Protectorate is gone."

"The leverage I lose against the Protectorate is leverage I gain on Armsmaster," he pointed out. "And I've got a chance to earn more, too. It's not like the ABB was my only chance to hand over some supervillains."

"If you'd had the costume, you could have posed for pictures and been Brockton's savior," she said. "But you're playing it safe and working hard for nothing."

"Taylor, if I was responsible for a gang war breaking out with all those villains trying to claim a piece of the Docks, it'd do more harm than any ferry could make up for," he pointed out. "I have to keep the area stable, and then work on improvements."

"Taking out Lung and the Azn Bad Boys was supposed to be an improvement, it was supposed to be helping the people. If you have to work twice as hard to make up the difference now that they're gone, it sounds like you're saying we were better off with them."

He shook his head, then reminded himself again that she couldn't see. "It's not like that Taylor, it's just about timing. The city will be better off without Lung, without him recruiting kids and demanding tributes and planning assassinations against other gangs. The city will be better off without his people trafficking drugs and people. But they'll also be better off if the people that take over this area are not as bad as Lung is."

"Well, that'll take some consideration. Who would you put in? Surely not the Empire."

"Nah, white supremacists are never the best option," Danny said ruefully. "But certainly not the Merchants either. They just ruin everything they touch. Maybe Faultline?"

Taylor considered that while she typed. "It's not a bad idea, but the problem there is that there's no record of her mercs working particularly hard to hold territory. Then again, neither do the Undersiders, so they may not be a possibility either."

"That may leave it to the Travelers then," he said. "Unless you think Coil would be interested?"

"Coil's all about downtown, but he's ambitious and always jockeying for turf. He might work out," Taylor said.

"Any word on how he treats the areas he's holding?"

"Nothing conclusive. He seems like a very hands-off kinda guy. Anyway, he's gotta be better than the Empire or the Merchants, and those are gonna be the big contenders for the territory," she said. "C'mon home, we can worry about this tomorrow."

* * *

 _Author's notes: I don't write this story in first person because that's Taylor's thing and I thought it might be confusing to do so. Canon Skitter and my Danny Hebert have some strong parallels but distinct differences. If Danny seems a bit over-powered at this stage and the next few chapters, I think it's due partly to the fact that Danny is a college-educated adult with lots of practice in problem-solving and not a teenager, partly due to the fact that his trigger trauma manifests less personally than hers did, and partly because rats are a more effective weapon than bugs are. And also this chapter foreshadows his biggest liability compared to Skitter, that he is not willing to sacrifice his rats the way she is with her bugs. Feedback and critique is valued, as are any questions that anyone has about the story_


	3. Chapter 3

"That didn't take long," Taylor said.

It was not even noon on Sunday, less than twelve hours from last night's action, and Danny had gone out on a patrol just to familiarize himself with the area. And he had only been riding for fifteen minutes when he started running across graffiti tags from the Merchants. They had apparently claimed about a quarter of the Docks already, and would doubtless push for more if their challenge wasn't answered.

"Not long at all," Danny said. "They're on the west, if Empire starts sending its people down from the north to start collecting taxes, the gang war is in full swing."

"Okay," Taylor said. "Step one, you gotta get rid of the tags. It's like posting your flag in a new land to colonize it: no flag, no country."

Danny started sending rats up the walls, scraping at the brickwork and concrete to bring down a fine shower of painted dust, etching out the spraypainted graffiti to obliterate or disfigure it. "Working on that. Next, I should answer the challenge, punish them for the imposition?"

"Something like that. You just got pushed, so push back," she said.

It started in one long-vacant townhouse. The gang members that were squatting there were tired from a late night of tagging and partying, and they drowsed on the wadded carpet they had pulled up and rolled up to serve as crude furniture. One of them woke up, still clutching his spoon, and reached for the stash that wasn't there. "The fuck?" he murmured. "Where'd I set it?" He sat up and looked around, but there was no sign of his bag. Or any other. He knew that his friends had brought their own baggies of heroin and molly, but there was none to be seen. He set about waking them up to have them help him look.

Other safehouses and squats were raided the same way. They were stripped of their drugs, their weapons, and their cash. In some cases their shoes were stolen, or the contents of their pockets. When nobody was watching, the doors were taken off their hinges letting the draft in, along with the peering eys of curious neighbors who had been wondering if they should call the police. A wave of defeated Merchants trudged and limped all the way back to their own territory, passing by rows of their own defaced tags. Some of them would report later that rows of rats stared at them, glaring like a jury as the Merchants went back to the area that their supervillains held.

And some of their older tags were missing too, cleared away by the Dock rats. The Merchants had attempted to take this new turf, and had just lost a block of their own for the temerity. They brought word back to their leader, who did not take the news well. Others saw the tags, drew the conclusions. Phone calls were made. Rumors were spread. A squad of skinheads that had been headed south from downtown got a phone call, paused at the border. And after a while, they pulled back, leaving the Docks alone for the time being. Open warfare was averted.

When he got back home, he was ambushed. Taylor was waiting for him with sketches and swatches. "I'm not taking no for an answer. If you're going to be holding the territory against the other gangs, you need to have a presence, you need to have an image. People need to know who you are so they can imagine you, think about you, fear you if they have to. But as long as you're the mysterious unseen figure guiding the rats, people won't react to you, just to the rats."

Danny sighed, and immersed himself in the world of cape costuming. He rejected anything too colorful, and he rejected anything too sinister. Bold blues and reds got vetoed, and anything in a basic black. They negotiated to a brown-and-tan theme, and her sketches began to narrow down to a specific motif. The mask would not represent a rat or mouse, and no logo or symbol worn on the costume. They agreed first on the mask, a simple medium-brown hood that covered him from the collarbone up, with cutouts for his goggles and a built-up mouthpiece like his painter's mask underneath so that it wouldn't tug too much when he spoke, and wouldn't smash his nose flat. That was apparently a major problem with skintight masks.

After that they came back to the olive-drab cargo pants and the olive-drab trenchcoat. Danny was hesitant about that at first, but then Taylor showed him a sketch of it, with his right arm covered in a swarm of rats that ran from his shoulders down to his fingertips, and he had to admit it looked imposing but without the "trying too hard" vibe that he got from a lot of superhero costumes. Full gloves were argued against fingerless gloves, and fingerless won. Tabi slippers were argued against combat boots, and tabi slippers won. Danny went to his bedroom and pulled out a brown UnderArmour shirt from when he thought his workout was going to be a lot more glamorous than it was, and he matched that against the other items and it was fairly cohesive. "I've got some ideas for accessories," Taylor said. "You get started on that mask."

Danny Hebert went down to the basement workshop, where the rodents were busy cutting streamers and painting a giant banner for Wilma's baby shower. He swept a massive drift of confetti into a garbage bag, tied it shut and set it aside for the rats to build another pile. Others were working on the painted map, making a comprehensive series of coded markings for each building and a journal of features about each building in his territory. It was a big job, but he tended to do well at those. Some mice pulled out some scrap fabric and needle and thread, and Danny unfolded a deck chair and made himself comfortable with his head right at the level of the worktable. Fabric was measured twice, cut once, while needles were threaded. The pieces were held in place for a perfect fit, the goggles fitted in place, the reinforced painter's mask applied, the edges stitched together. The sewing took surprisingly little time, ten minutes from start to finish with all the paws working together. He waited until they were all clear, then he stood up and walked upstairs.

Taylor turned, and jumped. "Crap, you look different," she exclaimed. "And you.. you actually did a really good job of hiding the seams. I can't even see where you put the zipper."

"I, uh, don't know how to sew a zipper," Danny pointed out. "C'mon, I can't even thread a needle with my own hands, I'm lucky mice are more dexterous than I am."

"Are you seriously sewed into that hood?" Taylor asked with morbid fascination. "Holy cow, that's weirdly awesome."

He didn't answer, he just picked up the athletic shirt and the cargo pants and went to get changed. When he came back, Taylor held out the climbing belt from his rock-climbing set, modified to be a basic utility belt with pouches on it. "Less pouches," he advised, handing it back.

He put on the tabi slippers, and she draped two loops of long silver chain around his body like a bandolier, from his left shoulder to his right hip, clipped to his belt with a carabiner. "You're not always going to have the Protectorate to tie people up for you, and not everyone can be held with zip ties," Taylor insisted. "Besides, it looks badass." He put on the gloves and the jacket, and stepped in front of the full-length mirror to test out the effect. He turned one way then the other, then nodded after a bit. "Better than the wooden armor, " he said. "It's very neutral, very earth tones, but that's about right for a rogue. Not a hero or a villain. A couple black highlights on the shirt and the slippers, but not too much. I think this'll do until we find something better."

"High praise," Taylor rolled her eyes, but she smiled. "Now, cut yourself out of that hood so we can have dinner."

Taylor left to hang out in her room for a bit after dinner, and he checked to make sure she had her phone close at hand and charged up in case he needed dispatch assistance. Then he tucked the trenchcoat, the chain and the cloth pieces of the hood into a backpack with some needles and thread, and rode out again. It was a couple dozen miles to sweep the border of his territory, fortunately he only had to patrol one border because the Docks bordered right on the water for most of its area and the Boardwalk was a neutral ground that covered one side. On the bike he could cover the distance in about an hour and a half, sweeping with his area-effect supersenses to make sure that his neighbors were behaving themselves.

And he was only half an hour in when he ran across something odd. He paused at a safe distance and sent the mice to investigate. There wasn't many reasons he could think of that someone would leave a five-foot-tall mound of cheese with a white flag sticking out of the top of it. The cheeses were all types, from wheels to blocks to processed slices to salad crumbles. It was in an isolated alleyway right at the border of the ABB's old territory, built up in a pyramid to support the wooden dowel rod that the white flag hung from. He swarmed the area, sending rodents up the walls, into sewers, checking out windows and fire escapes and any other opening that could face towards the pile. And on top of an adjoining rooftop, there were a couple of teenage girls and a massive animal that was shaped like Gozer from Ghostbusters but appeared to be made out of bare meat stretched over barbed, hooked bone spurs. He recognized the smell, a ton or so of raw meat, slightly rotten. That smell had been fresh on a rooftop just next to the place he had first fought Lung. One of the girls was petting it, roughing it behind the ears like a dog. The other girl was staring down at the alleyway, leaning her elbows onto the ledge surrounding the rooftop. She offered a casual one-handed salute towards the rats that stared at her.

The rats reached up their paws and saluted back. And Danny Hebert, with his hood sewed back in place and the jacket flapping around his legs, stepped out into the open area beneath. His right arm was wreathed in a wriggling layer of furry squirming bodies that ran up and down, sliding over and past each other constantly. Mice and rats swarmed in from the shadows, piling onto the cheese and consuming it ravenously. Cheese wasn't actually that good for rodents, but it was better than nothing. He didn't let any of them really gorge themselves, but they each ate enough to supplement their regular diet and then streamed away to make room for their hungrier brethren. He looked up at them. "You want to talk?" he called up to them.

"Yeah," the girl in lavender with the domino mask called down. "You mind if we come down?"

"I'm a little concerned about that animal with you, but if you were going to attack you would have gone after me last Saturday," he called up.

Apparently that was answer enough, because the two teenagers climbed aboard the giant animal and held on tight. It leaped over the edge of the building, caught itself against the opposite wall, bounded off, checked itself on another wall, using lateral motion to bleed off the momentum of its descent. It rebounded off the walls, each hit lower than the one before, until it was down to street level. Its claws gripped the concrete, and its fetid breath panted with its tongue lolling out like a dog. The girl in lavender had a motif on her costume that showed a staring eye, and the other girl was larger and more muscular, with long uncared-for hair and a plastic Halloween mask of a dog's face held on with elastic cord. "So you must have taken down the ABB," the lavender girl said, sliding off down to the ground.

"And you must be the Undersiders," he said. "How's it going?"

"Cheeky," the girl said back. The other still had not spoken. "Rat powers, that's cool. We came to see you because nobody knows anything about you."

Danny nodded. "And you like to know things before anyone else?"

"I do," she said, nodding. "I'm Tattletale, this is Bitch."

"Pleased," Danny said, stepping forward and offering a hand to shake. "I don't really have a name yet, but let's just call me Wharf Rat until something more official comes up." These girls were about Taylor's age, if he could judge through the masks.

She shook his hand with a shake. "I'll do that. But I assure you, we're nothing like your daughter, so don't start thinking that way. You probably should guard this area well, since she's so close by."

Danny paused, squinting at the girl. Cold reading? Psychic powers? A good spy network? Supersenses? There was no good way to know, so there was no definite way to keep her from doing it again. "So, what do you want?" he asked.

"I said, just to meet you because nobody knows anything-"

"I mean, in general," Danny said. "You guys. Goals, plans, objectives, motivations. What is it you guys want? What makes you guys tick?"

Bitch snorted through her nose. Tattletale paused a second before she answered. "Money, mostly. And fun, and -"

"Money's a means to an end," Danny said. "People want money because they want something else."

Tattletale rallied back with a smile. "Well, we want a little of everything, so we have to get a lot of money. And then-"

"You've already figured out most of what you need to know about me," Danny said. "I have rats. I want to take care of the Docks. I took down Lung and Bakuda and Oni Lee, handed them over to the cops instead of killing them. But I have two questions for you guys, and then we can call it even."

"You don't kill, but you fight villains and get them arrested," Tattletale said. "You think of yourself as a hero. And you want to take care of this area, but you don't think of it as a long-term job. This is a stepping-stone for you, just a temporary arrangement. You've got a plan for these neighborhoods, someone else that will take over. Or you're looking for someone, that's more like it."

"Two questions," he repeated.

But the girl was just getting warmed up. "Hmm, you've been practicing these powers for a while in secret, but there was something particular that made you start using them just recently. The ABB did something that provoked you, so you pushed back. And you pushed back against the Merchants, you don't take well to anyone pushing you around. You've got a nasty temper and it's not controlled as well as you'd like."

"Why didn't you guys join the Wards?" Danny asked.

"Because it's bullshit," Bitch grunted. It was more of a growl than words.

"Basically, because it's bullshit," Tattletale reinforced her teammate's message. "Too many rules, oversight, questions, restrictions, people watching over your shoulder, all of them convinced they know better than we do just because that's what people do. So, you like recruiting people, you've done it a lot, as a job, but also as a passion. Poltiical campaigns, grass-roots activism, getting people to do what's good for themselves by joining together to do the right thing together."

"Second question," Danny cut in. "Is it just you kids, or is there an adult mixed up in this too? Like that guy in _Oliver Twist_ that teaches the kids to steal for him, setting them up to take all the risks while he takes the largest share of the rewards?"

Bitch reacted before Tattletale had time to formulate her answer. The larger girl turned to her teammate. "Fuck this," she snarled, then turned towards the Wharf Rat, "fuck you," she snarled at him before she spun on her heel to stomp towards the giant slavering animal. "And fuck him!" she yelled, swinging herself up onto the beast's back, using bony knobs to step up like a ladder to take the monster's back. Tattletale hung back as the giant creature wheeled in place, following its rider like a well-trained horse, and leaped up onto a wall and then bounded away, crashing into one wall after another as it gained some height and took to the rooftops. Tattletale stared after her.

"Sorry about that, was she your ride?" Danny asked.

"She does that kind of thing," Tattletale said, shrugging.

"She seems like she's pretty hurt," Danny said. "She needs something she's not getting, or someone."

Tattletale glanced at him. "You a shrink? No, you're not a shrink. Quit being a shrink. I can get another ride. You just enjoy the cheese, okay? Oh, and take this," she said, pulling a phone out of a pocket and handing it to him. "It's easier to give you a call than to set out giant piles of cheese."

"Actually, cheese isn't that good for them," he said. "Bread, meat, fruits, those are all good, but dairy isn't something they should eat a lot of."

She glanced back at the flag, laying on its side. "Could've fooled me, they ate it fast enough."

"It was a peace offering with a flag of truce," he said. "I'm not going to snub that just because it was a shitty peace offering. I'm heading out, you should catch up with your friend. If you need me, give a call," he said, and tucked the phone into his pocket. He walked away, keeping an eye on her with the rats to make sure that she didn't follow him. When he was far enough away, he took the phone out of his pocket and pulled out the battery and the sim card, then tucked them into an evidence bag in his pocket. He had the rats on his arm swarm up to cut through the stitches holding the hood together, then tucked it into his pocket while the rats climbed down his body and dispersed. The jacket was taken off, bundled up, tucked under his arm, and the chains were tucked away inside the bundle. When he got to the backpack and the bicycle he stuffed his costume into it, then climbed up on the bike and pedaled along. He kept Tattletale in his range, watching her from corners and cracks and crannies, dark tight spaces that she could not see into.

She walked like she knew he was still watching her, alternating between open streets so she could see his spies, and then ducking into the maze of alleys so she could lose pursuit. A couple times she actually threw him off, but she underestimated the rats' sense of smell and he picked up her trail again. She made some calls on her cell phone, and he was able to hear her talking insistently to one of her teammates, getting increasingly irritated with someone called "Regent" until he promised to make Bitch come back and pick her up. Then Tattletale climbed a fire escape and pulled herself up onto the rooft, waiting there for her teammate to come retrieve her again.

Danny didn't need to wait for Bitch to come back with her pet monster, he knew he could track them during the week. Now he knew how they traveled, and what the creatures smelled like. He had smelled that scent on rooftops before, but so spread out that he had to work hard be able to connect their path at all. But having seen the animals in motion, he could see how it bounded off walls as well as roofs. He hadn't thought to have his rats smell the sides of buildings for traces of raw rotting meat. He rode away to finish out his route, and added that to the list of things for him to follow up on later.

* * *

Monday morning he woke up early to check his territory again, and found a group of Merchants that were trying to move back into the area he had taken from them as compensation for their attempted takeover. After they had made their big land grab he had moved his borders a block to the west, and now some of the scruffy, unwashed junkies that hung onto the Merchants were moving back into those shacks and squats and putting up their crude graffiti tags again. The Wharf Rat stole their drugs and destroyed them in the sewers, stole their cash and weapons, ripped up their shoddy clothes, chased them out into the street, and even chewed through the support beams and destroyed the condemned houses they had ben crashing in. And then he moved a block to the west, expanding his territory one more time, chasing the Merchants deeper back into their own territory, destroying the Merchants' logo wherever it was posted.

He was not interested in giving them one inch just to see if they would take a mile. He was going to train the Merchants to respect the Docks and the sanctity of his territory the same way he would train a puppy not to mess the rug: consistency and immediacy. Punish every infraction immediately, consistently. Every instance must be responded to or they would get mixed signals, but if they learned that every single infraction led to a discipline action, every time, they would stop misbehaving.

Then he rode to work and changed clothes, and buckled in for another day of negotiations. He spent the majority of the morning juggling emails between the owners of some of the local factories, the local Councilwoman for the area of the harbor, the tax assessor's office, and a local bank. He was trying to broker a four-way deal that would let the industry captains to defer some of their taxes until they had seen profits above a specific margin, giving them the option to defer costs if the plan didn't work out. There was a lot of resistance from each side, nobody wanted to be the first to concede anything at all, so he had to wrangle and winkle out small gains from each side and use those to lever the others for a small concession, a small promise, a carefully-worded counteroffer.

It was easy for things like this to get bogged down, but the fact that he could lock his office door and set five rats on the keyboard of the desktop computer, the laptop computer, texting from his phone, and making calls on his desk phone at the same time, really helped keep the momentum going and gave each of the parties the impression that this plan was moving fast and that they could work to keep up or they could fall behind. He honestly regretted that he had to step away from his office shortly before noon. He shuffled all the rats out, and locked the grates to make sure they stayed away while he was gone. Then he put on his tie and jacket and took the bus north to City Hall, to meet the mayor at his office.

He stayed on his phone as he rode, texting and emailing with one hand while he held the overhead strap for balance. And as he sat on the benches outside of the mayor's office he barely looked up at all. He was half-certain that the benches were so uncomfortable just so that visitors would be reminded how little they mattered and how important the mayor was. Finally his receptionist looked up, and called his name.

"I've got ten minutes, my meeting was running late," the mayor said without greeting as he stood and went to his coatrack. He took down his jacket and swung it over his shoulders and arms, tugging it into place. He was a tall man with a leonine manner, a coif of wavy full gray hair and a long, stern chin. "I was told this important enough to jump the docket and interrupt my day."

The meeting had been scheduled a week ago, Danny knew, and the man was not actually giving him any sort of priority, he was just saying that to make it seem like Danny was imposing on his time and put him on the defensive so he'd have to justify his ten minutes with the mayor. Instead of going defensive, he leaned in. "I was hoping you could tell me where that one-point-nine million dollars went," he said.

The mayor froze, his eyes tracking left to settle on Danny, seeing him for the first time.

"June, three years ago, remember? Your bank records it as being a real-estate deal, but there was no exchange and no deeds. No property changed hands, no contracts were signed or notarized. Just shy of two million dollars went away without a trace, and you never filed for a refund or stop payment or anything."

The mayor unfroze, lurched back into motion. "I'm a real-estate developer by trade, like my parents, I've done hundreds of land deals in the past three years. Dozens or hundreds of documents for each of those and-"

"And I've read through all of them," Danny said. "I was able to connect each and every thing, except for one sum of one-point-nine million dollars that disappeared in June two-thousand-eight. That money could have put the ferry into operation, could have connected the north and south sides of the city, could have brought ten times that much money into the city."

"You checked every?..." the mayor repeated weakly, running down like a clock again.

"Every single page. cross-referenced and double-checked. Tell me something, was it worth it? Whatever you spent that money on, was it worth it?"

The mayor deflated, his lionlike confidence sagging over his bones. "I won't answer any questions about that."

"You can't even tell me if it was important? Maybe you spent the money on hookers and blow, maybe you spent the money on ransoming some helpless child away from terrorist kidnappers. Tell me if the money went to something worthwile," Danny demanded.

"I won't answer any question," the mayor said. His bluster was gone, but when he deflated from the loss of leonine strength, all that was left was a skeleton of ironlike resolve and stubbornness.

Danny tried again. "There has to be some-"

"I will resign my position before I answer any questions," the mayor said. He sounded sad as he said it, but he continued. "I will go to prison before I answer questions. Take my money, beat me senseless, whatever you have to do, I won't talk about it." He sighed, and stood, and straightened, and swelled with the return of his countenance. "Whatever you think you've got, Mister Hebert, it's not what you think. Just stop there, leave it alone." He shot his cuffs, checked his collar, and walked out to meet his car to take him to his lunch appointment. Danny stared after him, his mouth open.

* * *

"Okay, that's really weird," Barry said, sitting back in his chair. "He wouldn't even make up a lie to protect himself?"

"No," Danny said, shaking his head. He leaned against the doorframe of his friend's office. "I mean, he probably figured that if he lied I'd just research it like I researched the rest of it, and would come back and call him on his lie. But as soon as I called him out, he just locked right up. Whatever's going on, it's something big. More important to him than anything else."

"Family," Barry said. "I follow local politics as much as you do. And I know that the only thing our mayor likes more than shady land deals that technically aren't illegal on the flimsiest of pretexts, is his family. If he is willing to lose his job, his money, go to prison and get shanked by Big Blue the Bowling Ball Bag Bludgeoner, then it's because he's protecting his family."

Danny slumped in place. "Well shit. I'm not going to go after the man's family. That's just... low."

Barry made a face. "Seriously? You busted your ass on this, and it's kind of a big deal. It could affect the city, we don't even know what this is or what it means, but the mayor's office is a big deal and his secrets are a big deal."

"It's important, yeah, but so is having some basic humanity," Danny said. "I want answers, and that's important, but his family is important to him. I can understand that."

The big accountant sighed, and nodded. "Okay, yeah. I get why you wouldn't want to push that issue. Just hold onto your research, think about it, give yourself a window to come back to this if things change, all right?"

Danny nodded, his face somber. "Yeah, yeah I'll do that Barry. Thanks, you're a pal."

"So, how about that tax deal you're brokering for the factories on the east side? Any traction there?" Barry asked.

A smile cracked across Danny's face. "Yeah, actually. The factory owners have called in an impartial lawyer to draw up a preliminary contract for their cooperation, the councilwoman's office is ready to sign off if the tax assessor gives the okay, the tax assessor's office is digging through records to confirm the legality of this maneuver, and the bank's officer has bumped this matter up to the branch director for approval. I might have this thing."

Barry leaned back, his eyes wide. "This will be jobs, Danny. Hundreds of jobs. For a few months, at least, maybe it will catch on and snowball."

"I don't want to get ahead of myself," Danny said, but he couldn't keep the grin off his face, he was almost giddy with excitement. "The hard part is going to be keeping this from Taylor, I don't to get her hopes up for something that hasn't panned out yet."

He walked back to his office, while the rats continued doing his job from across the building. He was taking steady steps towards this deal every hour, and he had a great feelling about it. And he also knew that without his powers, it would have taken literally weeks to get to this point, maybe months, or never at all. Small delays compounding, small delays allowing others to drag their feet, hesitation leading to stagnation. But with the ability to work ceaselessly on four fronts at once, he could shove it through in just a few days. And in those weeks that it would have taken, anything could have happened that would distract him, dissuade him, discourage him.

In another reality where Danny Hebert did not have powers, he would be struggling with the early stages of this deal still, while Bakuda started bombing runs on the city. And when Taylor ran away, it completely shut down this arrangement entirely. But in the reality where Danny had powers and Taylor did not, things were going well for this brokered arrangement.

At the end of the day, he took his clothes in a tight bundle and put them in his small athletic backpack, along with the collapsed cooler from his lunch. And also a single rat and his cell phone. As he rode, he continued to read and send emails, right until the close of business and all his contacts cut off for the night. And then he rode a circuit around the Docks, an hour and a half to make sure that the other factions of supervillains were not encroaching on the power vacuum, instigating a gang war. The Merchants were staying right where they were. But now that things were quiet on that front, he had to worry about Empire Eighty-Eight to the north.

The Merchants were a gang of junkies and malcontents and street people and crazies, but Empire was a group of white supremacists that incorporated white-trash skinheads and prison-tatted peckerwoods but also a cool businesslike savvy and a team of eight supervillains at the top of their organization. It had been over a dozen before their group split up some time ago, and a dozen supervillains on one team was a problem for everyone, that was as much as the Protectorate and the New Wave team put together.

He pulled over when he was near the middle of the Docks, a few miles from home, and he took out the phone that Tattletale had given him. He fit in the sim card and the battery, and checked it for messages or texts. A few hours ago, shortly before he spoke to the mayor, a voice mail had been left on the phone.

"This message is for the man who introduced himself as the Wharf Rat," the message said. It was Tattletale's voice. "I wanted to arrange an exchange of information. For example, maybe you would want to know when and where the Merchants are going to make their big move and try to take you out. In return, the Undersiders want you to not track them to their headquarters, and don't ask how we know, and in general just don't look for information on us. This offer has a deadline, either you take us up on it or the Merchants take you out and it's a moot point. Ta!"

He dialed the number the call had come from.

"Tattletale here, Mister Rat."

"Don't bother tracing this call."

"I won't, you're just at the geographic center of your claimed territory, not actually near your own home," she said cheerfully. "So, you're ready to make the trade?"

"You just want my word that I won't snoop around your business? A promise is good enough for you?"

"Your promise is," she told him. "Do I have your word that you won't interfere with us?"

"If the information is good, then you've got a deal," he said.

"Swell. Tomorrow night, Skidmark and Squealer are going to take her new wheels for a joyride through the Docks. They roll out of their garage at four pm to catch the most rush-hour traffic. Expect chemical weapons, conventional weapons, ramming attacks, and a lot of mayhem designed to do nothing but mess the place up and drive people out."

Danny considered that. "Okay, thanks for the heads-up. I don't know what you did or paid for that information, but I hope that you feel it was worth it just to have me stop sniffing around. I for one feel I got the better end of the deal, but ideally you feel the same way yourself."

"Count on it, Mister Rat. Big picture I came out way ahead here."

"Good to hear it, Miss Tattletale. But, one more question if I may?"

"Whatcha got?"

"The other night I asked you what you want. What I should have asked is: are you getting what you want?"

"You're talking nonsense, Mister Rat."

"I just want to know whether you are getting what you want. You don't have to tell me what you want, or tell me what you're doing to get it. But the place you're in, and the path you're on, is it giving you the results you want?"

There was a long pause before Tattletale replied. "Why are you asking?"

"Because everyone should ask that, and everyone should answer that question. Because I think that supervillainy is like a lot of bad habits, that you get stuck in it after it has stopped serving its purpose. Because I think that four kids on their own should have someone, somewhere, watch over them just a little bit. Look, don't answer me right away, it's not a small question. Just roll it around a bit and see what you think."

"I'm starting to think Bitch was right about you. Fuck you, Mister Rat." Her tone was lighter than her words, flippant and not hateful.

"Whatever. I'll be in touch. Thanks for the heads-up."

He hung up, and started making preparations.

 _Author's Notes: This version of the story is going to move a bit faster than the original, both as plot and as narrative. The plot moves faster because of Danny's specific powerset lets him set his own timetable, he can take the fight to his opponents in a way few heroes can. And my depiction will be faster and more intensive, since at this point it is assumed that the reader already knows the Worm canon material. That means that I can skip a lot of description, since everyone here already knows who the characters are, what they look like, what the locations are, et cetera._


	4. Chapter 4

Tuesday was spent on the phone, the other phone, the laptop and the desktop computer. The bank president was hesitant and needed the whole process explained to him from the beginning, with carbon-copies from all the assurances that the other parties had already offered, and he sent every question to Danny instead of asking his own subordinate who had been handling the whole process up to this point. It threatened to bog down the whole negotiation, and Danny was juggling the tax assessor and the councilwoman and the factory owners' lawyer, who also had plenty of questions. Danny was tempted to apply some leverage, but he needed this man to be one hundred percent onboard and happy to sign, with no last minute qualms or second-guessing.

 _These people could help each other, and help everyone else at the same time, if they would just stop quibbling over the details and trying to screw each other for the biggest profit for just themselves_ , Danny thought to himself. It was hard to believe that these people were each so eager to strangle the golden goose, to lose out on long-term benefits for the short-sighted interests of right-now.

Finally Danny realized how to cut through the bank president's circular questions and constant second-guessing, and he fired up some PowerPoint presentations that showed everything in neat, colorful graphs, with the numbers that go up and show that this graph is a good graph. Fifteen minutes after he sent that, the bank president was ready to sign. The lawyer signed next, and the tax assessor and the councilwoman got their signatures notarized for the deal.

"Barry," Danny said. "The deal is on. Nine new factories are going to begin production in the harbor district starting next week. We're already being asked for every single Dockworker who's available. We did it, we won. Oh, and I've finished the confetti and streamers, the banners are half-done. I'm taking a half-day."

Barry was still sitting with his mouth open when Danny walked out the door to his bike. He had a lot of preparations to make for tonight.

At four o'clock, a roll-up garage door at the border of Merchants territory and the Docks rattled its way up to the ceiling, revealing a monster. It was an ugly monster, snarling and rough-edged, drooling on the floor, with odd angles and a complete lack of grace. Its engine was massive and badly muffled, it belched smoke, it looked like a dune buggy designed by Big Daddy Kane and left in the rough-cut sketch. Too many pipes, too many tires, too many headlights, it was crammed full of stuff at every side with no smooth surfaces or blank spaces for the eye to rest on. And it raced out with a shrill shriek of vulcanized rubber and bored-out pistons, bouncing up the curb and along the sidewalk, then weaving into traffic to cut off the cars there as it raced off. It rammed several cars off the road with its big beefy spiked bumper, and it took turns at full speed by running up onto walls with its angled tires, or hauling long screeching turns that left rubber behind on the road. Skidmark sat in the passenger seat, flinging out patches of impulsion as they went.

The spaces he affected were slightly color shifted, slightly reddish on one side and slightly bluish on the other, as the light reacted to the field by dragging out its wavelength on one side and compressing the wavelength on the other hand. They created a force of motion for everything that touched them or landed on them, pushing things or people from the red side towards the blue side. When it splashed down on a pile of garbage, the can was rolled out into the street, the garbage bag spilling out. The cardboard boxes piled next to the can were pushed out just as hard but with less resistance, so they flew up into the air and fluttered down across hoods and windshields as people tried to unwedge themselves from the traffic snarls left behind by the doombuggy's antics.

Squealer's monster was big and burly, shouldering and shoving other cars out of the way, but its massive tires could just as easily travel over another car, cracking the glass and denting the roof as it rolled over. The impulsion fields slapped down on the ground at odd angles, forcing the drivers to correct their steering this way and that as the wheels tried to haul them into oncoming traffic. Cars crashed, horns blared, glass broke, and the two villains rode away laughing. The smoke that belched out the back of the car seemed to hang in the air like a ground fog, never dispersing, and anyone who was walking or biking or driving with the windows down found themselves choking harshly on the fumes, some even falling to their knees as they were overcome. The coughing started to take on a distinctive rasping sound as their lungs began to fail. And it was only taking minutes for that fog to cover whole blocks.

And then they turned down a sidestreet at a skid, and saw a young Asian man standing in the middle of the street, facing them. He was silent and still, unflinching, untroubled, staring at the car that was barreling straight towards him. "Chicken!" Squealer whooped, gunning the gas to race straight towards him. He made no move to dodge, and she made no move to spare him. And as the bumper made the first contact, he vanished in a blur of scattered light just an instant before an explosion blew the doombuggy up into the air, shredding the tires. It landed hard, the frame of the undercarriage slamming against the asphalt hard, dragging along the ground as it lost its momentum in a shower of sparks and engine oil. With a strangely restrained 'whoof', the trail of gasoline caught on fire, dancing all about, climbing up towards the engine and the gas tank. Cursing and flailing, Squealer and Skidmark unbuckled themselves and leaped out of the car, staring in awestruck horror as her car started to burn in earnest. And then a hand in a fingerless glove tapped on Skidmark's shoulder from behind. "Hey man," came a slightly muffled voice.

Skidmark turned around right into a fist. It slammed into the bridge of his nose with astounding force, knocking him back off his feet to collapse on his back on the concrete. The fist had caught him right between the eyes of his grease-stained mask. Squealer muffled a squeal of surprise or fear as she saw the tall man in the trenchcoat step forward, the light of her burning car glinting off the metal chains across his chest and the lenses of his featureless mask. It didn't look like most masks, it looked painted on but it was eerily devoid of features. No mouth, no nose, but also no zipper or closure at all. It looked to her like a faceless man with stitches running along his scalp and cheeks. And he grabbed Skidmark by the front of her partner's shirt, lifting him up off the pavement and slamming him again with another hard punch, knocking out two of the Merchant's stained, gapped teeth. The Merchant's leader was nearly as thin as Danny, but a few inches shorter, his clothes dirty in a way that only extreme apathy and laziness could create.

Danny Hebert stepped back from the dazed Skidmark and brought his right hand to his pocket, dropping the roll of quarters he'd held into his pocket. The quarters had originally been for emergencies, but Tallboy had mentioned the other day that even a small fist-load or hand-weight could make the difference against fifty pounds of muscle. It had taken her quite a few minutes to show him the right way, but now that he knew it let him hit like a larger man, a stronger man. He turned towards Squealer. She was a tinker, but hardly looked the stereotype. She was either a young woman who partied hard enough to age herself prematurely, or a middle-aged woman who worked too hard at concealing her age. Either was possible. She had big blonde bottle-dyed hair that wasn't washed enough, and way too much makeup with road grit and soot trapped in the thick layers of cosmetic products. Her body was sexy but not pretty, overdone, with artfully-arranged tanlines that were all-too-visible thanks to her shamelessly revealing clothes.

The Wharf Rat stepped in closer to her, looming over her. "I'm not gonna hit you," he said. "But you need to stay away from the Docks forever." His rats were starting to suffer, so he pulled them out of the range of the ugly cloud left behind by the buggy's exhaust.

She looked at him with huge, watery eyes. "Fuck you," she said, and swung a kick up at his balls. He turned his hip into it, catching the kick on his thigh instead of this groin, but it threw off his balance and he was knocked back onto the ground. Before he could take his feet, the ground lurched underneath him and shoved him back away from her.

"Muh'fucker knock' ou' my fuck'n feef!" Skidmark snarled through blood as he threw down another impulsion field under Danny, knocking him back as he tried to get to his feet. Squealer grabbed a burning tire and flung it down on the first field, letting the impeller take it and shove it, hitting the second one to gain speed. A burning tire the size of his whole body came flying at Danny, and he dodged to the side close enough that it ruffled the collar of his jacket. Instead of trying to get to his feet Danny rolled to his hands and feet for stability and balance, but the next impeller caught just his knees but not his hands, yanking them out from under him while Squealer advanced with a wrench in her hand and a hard look on her face.

 _My own fault for trying to get chivalrous with a supervillain,_ he thought to himself. And then a tide of rats snapped out and knocked Squealer off of her feet, collapsing next to the Wharf Rat. He knocked her wrench away and a swarm of rats rushed for Skidmark, snapping at him. He slapped down a barrier of kinetic energy, one beside the other to form a wall to keep the rats at bay, spreading it from the sides to guard his own back.

Squealer recovered her breath, and the masked man was in front of her again. She felt sharp points all over her body, pricking her skin. "There are rats poised, ready to bite," he said. "Even one on your throat, and more on your wrists. If you move, they draw blood. If you try to sit up, they take you out. Some of these are even carrying some very nasty diseases that you don't want to have to explain to anyone."

Skidmark was done dealing with the threat of rats, and took an interest in the rest of the fight again. He threw out his hands, and Wharf Rat was hauled away from Squealer, dragging against the concrete until he fetched up against the curb. Squealer sneered at him. "We know about you. You're not a killer, you're bluffing," she said, and reached up to yank away the rats at her throat, tossing them away and sitting upright.

And then two rats bit into her calves, eliciting a loud shriek from the blowzy blonde woman. "I won't kill, but you'll have a hard time telling a doctor how you got leprosy, rabies and syphilis at the same time." She winced and nursed at her bitten flesh, the wounds running deep and bleeding freely until she pressed her hands against them. "Hey, Skidmark, interesting piece of trivia. Did you know that a mouse can survive a fall of fifty feet? They just bounce and walk away. See?" A small white mouse fell past Skidmark's shoulder, landing a foot away from him. It kipped up to its feet and took off, hitting the impeller fields and zooming away. "But, you know what doesn't bounce?" Wharf Rat asked, pointing upwards. "A brick."

Skidmark leaped clear, landing on his own field and bouncing away as a massive crash sounded behind him, pelting him with chips of concrete. This time, instead of a punch the Wharf Rat grabbed him in a sleeper chokehold, his elbow cradling the man's throat with the bicep and forearm pinching at the carotid arteries, using the other arm to lock them in place against Skidmark's own head and shoulder so the hold couldn't be broken. Half a minute later, he was unconscious.

Squealer had stopped the bleeding, and looked up at him with hateful eyes as he stepped her way, weaving to avoid the red-to-blue marks all over the ground. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of zip-tie handcuffs. "Put 'em on, or I slap your makeup one way and your face the other, then put them on for you," he said, his voice a growl.

"Holy shit, way to sound like a badass," Taylor said into his ear. "I'm a bit intimidated, and I'm your daughter and miles away." But Squealer ziptied herself, hands together, and then he stepped up close to bind her ankles, leaving her hog-tied on the sidewalk.

The EMTs were already on the scene, treating dozens of people for lung failure and massive mucosal irritations. The first cops arrived in a minute, and the PRT vans a couple minutes after that. And that was after But Danny Hebert, wearing a backpack, was well out of sight. He hung around until the rats could confirm that the Merchants were in the back of a containment vehicle before he rode away. "Did you really think it was that intimidating?" he asked into his bluetooth.

"Heck yeah. But don't overdo that sort of thing, you don't want to be the cape that threatens too much, and you want your threats to be nonverbal as much as possible," she pointed out. "But when you do threaten someone, threaten them like that. You gotta get 'em where they live. You take someone like Squealer. You could threaten to break her legs or punch her up, and she won't really get bothered. But you threaten to take her makeup off, and she's freaking out."

"Funny."

"I thought so. Anyway, where are you headed to now?"

"Backtracking the Merchant's path. I wanna see what else was in Squealer's workshop. If the cops find it, it goes to impound. If anyone else finds it, it can get used against me or innocent civilians. If I find it, then it helps us. Simple math."

"Kind of like the way you stole some of Bakuda's devices?"

"Acquired them, Taylor, I acquired them," he replied, stressing the word. "Or maybe I liberated them. Whatever. But yeah, a lot like that."

His opening gambit in this fight against the Merchants was a device he _acquired_ from Bakuda's warehouse. An anti-personnel landmine that projected a hologram of a man, a member of the defunct ABB, and that hologram was the bait that set the trap. When something touched the hologram and broke it up, the mine went off. One of those in the road had taken the doombuggy out of commission and set him up to finish them off. Though he hadn't done as good a job of finishing them off as he would have hoped. He needed to start carrying a couple containment-foam grenades so that he could send his rats out with a grenade and wrap up villains without having to get personally involved. And he needed to start wearing a cup, he thought to himself, remembering that kick that Squealer had thrown at him.

The rats could tell him easily which way the doombuggy had come from, there was nothing in the world easier to track than Squealer's creation. He pulled up outside the garage in Merchants' territory, and a rat from inside pushed the button to roll the gate open. The neighborhood here was even worse than the rest of the Docks, whole blocks of buildings with condemned notifications on them, every corner had evidence of a recent trash fire or one ongoing right then. It was the sort of neighborhood where methheads got together to sell their bodies for a fix, and bathtub chemists sold their toxic products to children. Given enough time, meth-lab accidents and ether explosions would level the entire district.

The garage itself was small, but the back wall of it was punched out and led to a larger space, the worst kind of showroom and the worst kind of workshop. Every tool was dirty, every set of sockets was out of order, grease and oil stained everything, half-empty cans of gasoline were spread all around with dirty rags. His skin itched just being inside this place, and he put on his latex gloves almost as a defense mechanism. He shuddered to think what the Merchants would have accomplished if they'd been able to set themselves up as a major force in the city. The creations themselves were rude and ugly, sloppy and overdone like Squealer herself. But unlike her, he could feel a palpable sense of power coming from them, their hunkered posture and broad frames hinting at the sheer torque and hitting power they packed. A massive helicopter with six propellers, all small to make it easier to fly in a city, was also covered in weapons ports and tow ropes and amplifiers and other accessories. A muscle car that was more engine than frame, a vast truck that looked like it could haul away the whole building, even a digging machine with a giant drill, all spread about lovingly in a tasteless display of decadent horsepower.

He walked past that, and over to the worktables themselves. Drawings and sketches and inspirations were written down. He could see the successive generations of each idea as she wrote them in, then modified them, rearranged them, and then finally started work. He picked up the plans for the vast truck in the front, and looked at the exploded diagrams of the massive monster. Then he flipped a page to see the version before, and saw it smaller, more compact, with a levered frame that would dig in for better traction depending on how much weight was on the tow hooks mounted front and back. Four small engines powered each wheel, with a pair of opposed flywheels that could build up immense torque or immense momentum as need be. The generation before was an elegantly sloped vehicle with carefully-perfected architecture that let it balance massive weights in a way that seemed to defy gravity itself.

All of the plans looked like that: the first inspiration was a marvel of simplicity and engineering that worked marvels of output from input, that were then "improved" with new ideas that ruined the original concept and needed to be compensated with more power, more devices, more accessories. Every page had doodles in the margins that could revolutionize the automotive industry, and the original sketches themselves could change the face of human civilization itself. He wasn't sure if Squealer didn't deserve her talents, or if Skidmark didn't deserve someone of her abilities. But whatever it meant, he took every piece of paper and rolled them carefully, tucking them into his backpack alongside his mask and jacket and chains and gloves. Then he took the keys off the pegboard, one for each of these monsters, and he tucked them into his pockets and had Taylor alert the PRT to the location of the workshop and its contents.

Now he had a very hard question for himself: was he going to absorb the Merchants territory into the Docks and defend them both, or let the other factions of the city move into that area without challenge? Would it provoke a gang war? Would he particularly care if it did? Would it be worth it? At this point, the only villain factions in the city were Empire Eighty-Eight, the Travelers, the Undersiders, Coil, and Faultline's mercenaries. The Undersiders and Faultline seemed mostly unconcerned with holding territory or expanding territory, just staking out enough space that they didn't intrude on anyone else's concerns, rather than collecting protection money or running real estate deals or running drugs or prostitutes. So that left the Travelers, Coil, and the Empire. Both Coil and the Empire tended to be more upscale than to take a dilapidated hellhole like the space the Merchants had claimed of their own, and while he didn't know much about the Travelers there was not much mention of them craving territory. Which meant that Skidmark's turf could sit empty and unclaimed, leaving the power balance unchanged. And without them jockeying for position, more stable all around.

* * *

On Wednesday morning Taylor showed him the front page of the Brockton Bay Gazette, the city's "other newspaper", which mostly ran personal ads and restaurant reviews, but sometimes also published stories that were either too sensational for the Times or were too upsetting to the Times' advertisers. And the headline was "Villains Apprehended, Local Hero Defeats Fifth Street Merchants".

"Local hero," Taylor said with a grin. "How about that? Some recognition. It mentions that you are affiliated with the Protectorate, but that your name is not officially on record yet."

Danny found himself grinning despite himself. "I like it. But I need to go on record with a name or the media will choose one for me, if this goes on much longer. Right now they're happy having a mysterious protector that beats up drug peddlers, but the next time they get a story on me they'll need a name."

"Probably," she said, and handed him his toast. "Anyway, I hear the rats going crazy down there, what happened?"

The knife scraped loudly over the toast as he buttered it. "So, you know who Squealer is, right?"

"Trashy tinker, does trashy cars."

Danny chuckled. "You're not wrong. Anyway, here's the big secret: she's a genius. Like, a very powerful tinker. Like Sphere before he went Mannequin. Squealer could probably boost Dragon herself ahead by twenty years. Not kidding. The thing is, she can't get out of her own way. The more she tinkers with an idea, the more 'her' it becomes. But her first drafts? They are marvelous. Simple, efficient, balanced, sturdy. So, I'm gonna build one of her first-draft vehicles."

"And that's what the rats are working on."

The toast crunched loudly as he chewed, chewed, chewed, and finally swallowed. "Yeah, that's what the rats are up to. I promised to drop investigations on the Undersiders, and my project with the mayor hit a brick wall in the biggest way, so there's not much going on besides Wilma's baby shower banners." He took another bite of toast and chewed.

His daughter shrugged. "Okay, you're building a tinker-designed super-car in the basement. Good luck getting it up the stairs. I think I'm going to ask for a tinker-designed supercar of my own for a graduation present."

Danny stood, and the chair scraped on the linoleum. "I'm actually thinking about handing these plans over to the Protectorate. They'll either design super-vehicles for themselves, or they'll loan out the plans to the car companies to work from, and we'll all have better cars and trucks than we have now. If the Protectorate makes a profit, then Squealer will sue for intellectual property and win, and she'll make enough money that she never needs crime or gangs or anything like that ever again."

"Why would she win?" Taylor asked, her forehead creased with confusion.

He returned her confusion. "Because I'd testify on her behalf, of course."

"Oh, of course. Get out of here and go to work," she said, slapping his shoulder.

"Not yet. I heard that there was an incident at school."

"There was," she said airily. "But I recorded it with my phone and took it to the principal. Emma and Madeline got suspended for three days, and I think Sophia got a talking-to since she's not approaching me directly anymore."

"Directly?" he asked, seizing on the operative word.

"Well, she tried to get some of the other girls to push me around, but again I just recorded what happened and they backed off. As soon as they recognize that they will face consequences for their actions, they leave me alone. All copacetic."

He sighed, and shook his head. "I'm worried they'll escalate."

"So am I," she replied. "But if that happens, we deal with the escalation. Now get out of here, you've got a job to get to, and it's a big job."

It was too, Danny had to put together a schedule of interviews for the next few days. Yesterday afternoon the chapter president had authorized a series of want ads in the local papers, and those ads had gone out in the next morning. Now their switchboard was lighting up with people wanting to schedule interviews, and Danny Hebert was kept busy setting up those appointments. A couple of his coworkers were getting roped in to help with the interview process so they could process the workload and get people into the system when the new jobs kicked in on Monday.

He spent the morning answering his phone and filling out four schedules for himself and the other interviewers, at the same time as he put together an email that would serve as a crash-course in how to handle the interview process for his co-workers. He kept both computers busy and moved from one phone call to the next as fast as he could, while one rat on his desk occasionally sent a text to Taylor during her breaks between classes, just touching base. And at lunch, she stopped replying. He tried not to get concerned, because he could not afford to leave early and go check on her, so he just had to trust that the school would call him if something had happened. He told himself that she had just turned her phone off for whatever reason, and that was that.

He found himself resenting the need to patrol the Docks border before he got home, but there were a lot of people counting on him and the school hadn't called to tell him that Taylor was in trouble. He squashed the urge to panic, the memories of the call he'd gotten when her mother had her accident. At a simple sweep, everything was fine in the Docks, but he knew he should do a more thorough sweep and also address the Merchants' turf, they were leaderless and that could blow up. But he just made the fastest circuit he could and then raced home.

As soon as he was two hundred yards from the house a small field mouse squirmed itself under the back door and scampered from room to room, following Taylor's scent until it spotted her in her room, doing homework at her desk. It gave a small squeak to get her attention, then waved its paw back and forth.

"Hi Dad," she said in the mouse's direction. "Are you on your way home?"

The mouse nodded.

"All right then, I'll see you in a few. We'll talk about dinner, okay?"

The mouse nodded, and then turned and left, squeezing under her doorframe and then down to the basement to join the others that were beginning their work. Wilma's banner was nearly done, the wall-map was getting a lot more complicated by the day, and rats were gnawing struts and joints and panels out of the scrap wood left over from the armor project. They were taking a lot of measurements, because a lot of the pieces they were making had extremely specific tolerances. Some of the wood needed to be a bit springier or lighter, so he was scouring the area for scrap wood or deadfall that would suit his purposes. He pulled up outside the house and unlocked the garage with his key, parked the bike and closed up behind him, letting himself into the house.

Taylor met him in the kitchen; she went in for a hug but stopped halfway. "God, you're dripping and you stink. Hugs after shower. What do you want for dinner?"

"Wanna make some hot dogs on the countertop grill?" he asked, still catching his breath.

She nodded. "That's fine, good, I'll get it started. You shower," she said, ushering him out of the kitchen. He kicked off his shoes into the living room and went to wash himself down in cool water, and he was still sweating lightly when he got dressed after.

His daughter looked him over and pronounced him acceptable for a hug, and then they embraced. He stood at the stove and put together some macaroni and cheese from roux and boxed pasta with a mix of sharp cheddar and jalapeno-jack cheese, while she stood a few feet away grilling hot dogs on a low heat. "So," he said to open conversation. "You stopped answering your phone."

Taylor's shoulders tensed, but she controlled her voice. "Sophia stole it just before lunch. She said I was using it as a crutch, and crutches make people weak."

"She has no idea what crutches are for then, because that is just stupid. And she's one to talk, she assaults people and steals their property to make herself feel better about her life." He set down the ladle and turned in place, hugging her from behind and kissing the top of her head. He squeezed her one last time then stepped back to his own station. "So, what are your feelings on this? Any ideas how you would prefer to proceed?"

"Can we get me another phone?"

"Easily and immediately," he said. "You'd rather not address this? Getting another phone won't do anything to keep her from stealing it too." He folded the cheese blend into the hot pasta with the roux, letting the steam-heat from the pasta melt the cheese in place to a perfectly gooey consistency.

Taylor sighed, her shoulders still tense enough to sing like a plucked guitar string. "Maybe I should bring a roll of quarters to school."

"My best case scenario is that you don't get in fights," Danny said over his shoulder. "My second-best-case scenario is that you win. If this girl won't lay off you, and the administration isn't doing anything, maybe you need to just lay her out. We can weather the fallout if they want to suspend you. Hell, if they expel you that'll just expedite your transfer to Arcadia High."

Hot dogs started to hiss and sizzle, the skin blackening just enough for flavor before she pulled them off onto a serving plate. "I've thought about it. But I'm on a psych profile already, I'm on record as being the poor little traumatized girl who had a nervous breakdown. If I showed violent tendencies, even one time, even in the face of outrageous provocation, they could claim that I'm a danger to the other students and that I shouldn't be in Winslow or Arcadia, or that I should be drugged up."

Danny paused, turning the heat down. "Crap. I want to say that's ridiculous, but you know these people and this situation better than I do. You really think they'd go to those kind of lengths just to keep from admitting that they've got a bullying problem with these girls?"

Taylor snorted. "The administration has never taken anyone's side but theirs until we had a court order, and even then they've tried to circumvent it. Yeah."

Silence reigned for a minute while Danny started ladeling the macaroni and cheese onto a couple of plates and she pulled out mustard and relish and ketchup. He sighed again, and said "If I wasn't completely booked up these next two days I'd come sniffing around to see if I can find anything weird. Maybe something I could overhear at the school, or something in the records I could find."

"I appreciate the sentiment that you want to help," Taylor said. "But it is a little creepy that your Plan A is to bug my school with rats." She laid out slices of sandwich bread and he put a couple on his plate, using them in place of buns and started dressing them with ketchup and mustard.

He dished her some macaroni while she held her own plate out, then covered the dish and turned the heat off. "Maybe it is a bit creepy," he admitted. "Okay, tomorrow I'll get you a new phone and I'll hand that off to you this time tomorrow. Hopefully Sophia will back off of you for a couple of days, she'll be satisfied with taking your phone and leave well enough alone until I can help out."

"Maybe," Taylor said mildly. "Okay, but enough about that, there's been a question burning on my mind all day now. Why the heck did you back off of the mayor's case? You said this morning that you hit an enormous brick wall." She took a bite and carried her plate to the table.

"He looked me right in the eye and told me that he would give up his job and everything he had before he would answer even one question about that money," Danny said. "Even go to prison. The guy was really, really adamant that there was nothing as important to him as not answering that question. And since all I have is a suspicious paper trail, I don't have any leads unless he gives me a lead."

Her eyes were wide as she stared at him. "Okay, yeah, that's a big damn brick wall. What the hell?"

"Barry thinks it's got something to do with his family. The mayor is power-hungry and corrupt, but the single most important thing with him, at all ever, is his family. It's like the only virtue the man has, he puts his family first in everything."

His daughter's stare had turned incredulous. "So, you know that the issue has something to do with his family, and you think that's a brick wall? That sounds to me like it's your next lead."

"What?" Danny said. "I can't bring the man's family into this. It's indecent. What would I do, how would I feel if someone involved you in Wharf Rat business?"

She scoffed aloud. "First of all, if his family is the lead then he brought them into this, not you. They are the issue, not the exception to the issue. And secondly, you getting into their business does not make it any more or less likely that someone would involve me. That's not sensible. Now, leaning on the mayor is the best way to help the whole city. You have a lead, something that doesn't match, and you know that it has to do with his family that is more important to him than anything. This is major leverage, this is the sort of thing you can use to move the whole city. You have to keep going."

"Damn, you're right," he said, holding a forkful of macaroni up with a thoughtful look on his face. "Okay, I wish I'd recognized this sooner, it might have made this factory deal go through easier."

Taylor shook her head. "Maybe, but it might have cheapened the accomplishment. You made a huge difference, all by yourself, with no leverage and no tricks." She took a bite, and so did he, and they chewed in silence for a while.

He cleared up after dinner while she crashed on the couch, turned on the television. With all the dishes in the dishwasher and the machine running, he went to the basement to get his costume. He paused at the bottom of the stairs and took a look at the current project. The plans he had acquired from Squealer's workshop were for something called a 'tunnel buggy', and it had been the original inspiration for the doombuggy that she and Skidmark had used to terrorize the Docks before he stopped them. It had eight tires, canted at angles inward and outward alternating. The body of it was jointed and segmented, flexing with the turn of the tires and balanced to bank into turns on a spindly network of straps and cords that put the vehicle's weight where it provided the best traction, capable of reaching freeway speeds and making hairpin turns. For best results he should be using hollow titanium rods with machined bevels, but oak and maple and balsa were acceptable substitutes and Danny had no intention of cannibalizing his bike for parts. The car was designed to run on a two-stroke motor the size of a suitcase with no emissions that was estimated to travel ten thousand miles between maintenance trips, but Danny did not have the machine shop he would need to make such a thing. Fortunately, he had the doodles in Squealer's margins, which included a pedal assembly for a bicycle or something similar that used a combination worm-screw/driveshaft to transfer the force of the pedals. The careless notes on it showed that it would let a cyclist reach speeds of about eighty miles per hour, but Danny knew that speeds that fast on a bike were stupidly unsafe. One small slip would kill the passenger. But it was a great replacement for the tunnel-buggy's superscience microengine. His rats were building all the components and laying them out in order. And this was his first time looking at the thing with his own eyes, his first time seeing it from a human perspective instead of a rat's eye view.

And he found himself very surprised by how small the thing was. It was three feet tall, most of that wheels, and only about nine feet long. It was big for a coffin but tiny for a car, even those Smart cars had more mass than the tunnel-buggy. The driver would lay flat on his belly like a sled, working a pair of control yokes like an aircraft. He was leaving out most of the electrical portions, his would not need a starter or even headlights. There was no trunk, but the underside of the cab had a cargo hold like a plane's, essentially dead space in the design that was needed for the balance and leverage to work, that could be made to hold a significant amount of whatever one could want. _Like a dozen rats with a dozen cell phones_ , Danny thought to himself. As small as it was, it was perfect for riding on sidewalks and through alleyways. _Or,_ he considered, _through the storm drains._

He picked up his backpack, folded the mask and trenchcoat into it, and headed upstairs to his current bike, his mind buzzing with the possibilities.

First order of business for the Wharf Rat was to patrol the Docks thoroughly, hitting the entire border and not just the contested border. He spotted two fights and he sent a handful of rats to make a show of strength, to remind the fighters to back off. He spotted a young man on the side of the road, his car stalled out. He was dressed too well for this neighborhood and he was cursing as he tried to get his cell phone to work. He was surprised to see a pair of rats trotting down the sidewalk towards him, carrying a pair of quarters. A minute later he was at the payphone, calling a tow truck. He stopped at a copy place, and slipped into costume.

The clerk at the copy shop was surprised to see a superhero in full regalia walk through the door, moreso to see the hero set down a twenty-dollar bill. "I need some flyers," the hero said. His mouth didn't seem to move as he spoke, his face was immobile under the mask but his eyes were big and brown and expressive. "Or maybe business cards. Something cheap, I'm looking to cover a lot of distance. What's easier, a dozen pieces of paper or a dozen cards from cardstock?"

They went with the paper flyers, since cardstock was surprisingly expensive. They put together a simple message and laid out the pages, printed out eighty pages, and then cut them into quarters. Three-hundred and twenty slips of paper that reach read "If you see members of a gang or if they approach you, please call the Wharf Rat and leave a message. Keep the Docks safe, be the first line of defense," and underneath that was the phone number to the burner that Tattletale had given him. When he rode past the blocks that bordered against Empire Eighty-Eight territory and Coil's holdings, he sent out rats with those flyers and pushed them through mailslots and under doorframes, leaving the messages for shop owners and residents who were most likely to see something that he didn't.

After that, he stopped by a city-sponsored drug clinic. The place was rundown and in a bad neighborhood, but it was close by and it was better than nothing. He walked in, and again the receptionist at the front jumped at the sight of him. "Afternoon," he said. "I was hoping you guys had flyers, brochures, something like that. A lot of them."

The next hour he spent in the Merchants' territory, cleaning the place out. The supervillains were locked up, all that was left was the junkies and indigents that had hung onto them and comprised their gang. These were the people that poverty hit hardest, the ones that lost themselves to drugs entirely or who spent so much time on the streets that they went feral. In large numbers they could be dangerous with the sort of savagery that only desperation can give someone. The ones that were armed got disarmed, the ones with contraband had it stolen away. There was nowhere they could hide or stash their drugs that he wouldn't find in minutes. Baggies were torn open and flushed away, but he did not mess with any of their other possessions. He simply left a brochure for the rehab clinic with each nest of struggling junkies in place of their poison, and he moved on. He could easily sink the rest of his life into trying to help just a few of these people, and he needed to budget his time and attention better than that, so he moved on.

He got home late, and had just enough time to see Taylor off to bed before he crashed out himself.


	5. Chapter 5

Lunchtime on Thursday, Danny was starting to feel the strain. "Eight interviews this morning," he told Barry as they ate a couple of soft pretzels and leaned against the front brickwork of the local library branch. "And ten interviews this afternoon. And exactly the same tomorrow. I've barely left myself time to use the men's room in this schedule."

"And you only scheduled the other three helpers with eight interviews a day," Barry pointed out. "If you're struggling, you could put more on them."

Danny shook his head. "Not if I want them to do a good job, I can't. These aren't just warm bodies we're hiring here, this is the union, man. We're interviewing people to join the brotherhood, the family. If this was just a job and I was just hiring people to haul stuff, I'd go through forty candidates a day. Sign, hired, boom. Sign, hired, boom. But we're bringing people to the Association of Dockworkers, and some care needs to be taken to make sure our people are going to be a credit to the name and the family."

"Amen," Barry said, nodding solemnly as he chewed. "I see you've put in to take Monday off. I wanna take this time to say that I support that decision wholeheartedly, you've done incredible work this week, and you've earned a day off. Heck, if we didn't need you so badly for these interviews I'd have insisted you take off today and tomorrow anyway, just because you did us all such a huge favor by getting these jobs in."

"Heh, if you'd insisted I wouldn't have fought you," Danny answered him.

"Now, I know you've done so much, and I hate to ask this, but, uh-"

"The banners are done, the streamers are done, and I've got more confetti that we're going to need," Danny said. "Don't worry, we're good to go for the baby shower this weekend."

"Oh thank God."

"I'll need you to swing by my place tomorrow night to pick them up so you and the guys can decorate them, it's all in my house and I don't have a car to carry it all around," Danny said.

"Will do," Barry said, nodding. And then they tossed their napkins into the garbage, squared their shoulders, and marched back to the office to do the good work.

With his rats typing his notes, Danny was free to turn all of his visible attention to the interview candidates, watching them and talking to them and getting a feel for who they were. And a rodent lie-detector in the air vent could help him turn his questions in the right direction. He could judge their reactions, measure their character, and he made his recommendations based on that. Unlike his last hiring, these people were largely just unemployed or underemployed citizens who just answered a want ad looking for money. They had no connection to the union or family with the Association, but the ad made it clear that the work would be hard and the pay would be a substantial increase from food service or temping. He had weeded out most of the unfit yesterday, so the candidates today were mostly good caliber.

He just needed them to be the sort that would stick with the job, and stick with their friends, when the going got tough. He needed a certain kind of person. And he was getting increasingly good at picking them out. The more he worked with the rats, the more he learned about the people he was talking to, and how he was talking to them. And he was surprised himself to find himself finishing early, ahead of his schedule. Twelve out of his eighteen interviews had been successful hires, good people he had a good feeling about. The other six he just couldn't trust to hang around longer than the money was good, and he wished them luck in their endeavors.

And in the parking lot, he pulled out his _other_ cell phone, inserted the sim card and battery, and checked the messages. There was only one.

"Wharf Rat, this is Kaiser. You've heard of me. I would like to meet, but we can speak on the phone if you would rather."

He considered it. He considered deleting the message. The leader of the white supremacist gang Empire Eighty-Eight, Kaiser was known to be dangerous, but the fact that he had presided for years over a growing criminal empire meant that he was also very smart and very ambitious. And the Nazi fetishism was really off-putting, he had to admit. But he dialed the number.

"This is Wharf Rat," he introduced himself.

"Excellent. I want you to know, first above all else, that I have no interest in your territory and I will not challenge your claim. I know that to be your priority, so I wanted that to be the first thing you heard."

"That's good to hear," Danny said. "But now I don't know what it is that you want."

"I could tell you that I'm looking to recruit. After all, you've eliminated two different groups that would have considered themselves as challengers to my holdings. You've demonstrated twice over that you can defeat multiple capes simultaneously on your own, even heavy hitters like Lung or slippery bastards like Skidmark. You've got muscle and smarts, and you've got versatility. And apparently you've got millions of eyes in this city. My people are very strong, very powerful, but they're top-heavy with fighters. I've only got a couple people for reconnaissance. But honestly, most people that would be interested in taking my side find me on their own, I hardly ever have to recruit. And from what I've seen of your methods, you're not likely to feel at home with us. So if I called this a recruitment drive, I'd just be lying to us both."

 _All of which is just a roundabout way of singing my praises before you tell me what you really want,_ Danny thought. _What is it that you need to butter me up for?_

But out loud, he just said, "I have to agree with your reasoning. But if you've called me, it's certainly because you've found some middle ground we can discuss?"

"Just so. This has to do with one of my former associates, our relationship has become estranged. She still agrees with me on most principles, but our falling out was ... personal. If you don't mind my saying, it was extremely personal. And I was hoping to enlist your assistance in reuniting us."

 _Machinations and schemes,_ Danny thought to himself. Kaiser was clearly up to something much bigger than this, leveraging one small action for great benefit. "So you want me to send rats to her home and scare her, threaten her, so that she will return to you for protection?" he asked.

"In a manner of speaking, yes, actually," the white supremacist gang leader said. "But the scare needs to be authentic, and it needs to be sold hard. I want you to take out her main lieutenant, Crusader. He is an extremely valuable member of our operation, and it will be bitterly hard to lose him. He has never wronged me and I doubt he ever will. So Purity will never suspect that I was behind this operation, it wouldn't make sense to her. This is my offer: the location of one of my best men, the opportunity to capture him as you see fit, and we both profit well."

"You are offering me the opportunity to poach one of your competitors and drive more allies to you," Danny pointed out. "You are trying to pay me with my own work and calling it an opportunity."

"Ah, my mistake, I had rather thought that you were a would-be superhero who was intent on cleaning out the gangs of this city one-by-one. I thought that you would relish the chance to get one of my people." The voice sounded genuinely surprised.

"Not so much. I hand prisoners over to the Protectorate to garner good graces in case I'm ever captured myself, but it's secondary to my concerns. Lung threatened me, so I took him out and everyone loyal to him. The Merchants threatened me, so I took them out and everyone loyal to them," Danny said. "So you thought I was a vigilante and that you could contract me like a hitman to take out one of your own people. But if you thought I was a hero out to make a name, it would have made more sense for you to set a trap and-, ah, I see."

There was a sigh, and a chuckle, from Kaiser's side of the conversation. "Forgive me if it seems a bit hamfisted, but most of the heroes in this city would actually have fallen for that. All right, my original offer stands. Only this time no trap. I will still offer up Crusader, in good faith this time. I thought that I could get Purity back at my side by having you fail to take out Crusader, foiled by my soldiers, and she would bring Crusader with her. But instead I will treat you fair, and offer Crusader up. If Purity comes back to me, that means more than her bringing her full retinue with her."

"I am amenable," Wharf Rat said. "But you're still asking me for my help with your ... arrangement. I must still ask a price for contracting out. And by rights I should double my price just because you attempted to lure me into a trap, but I find the best business arrangements are the ones in which the other party feels indebted, so I will let that pass." Danny Hebert looked around, sitting astride the saddle of his bicycle at a minor intersection, just a middle-aged bureaucrat haggling with a major crime lord over the phone. _What am I doing here? How did I get to this point? I have to get out of this. I have to find an excuse to get rid of him._

"I do appreciate your consideration and candor," Kaiser said, seeming a bit more impatient. "So what price would you ask?"

"Empire Eighty-Eight doesn't include any tinkers, so I will ask that you cover arrangements, logistics, negotiation and payment for Uber and Leet the tinker to create one device for me to my specifications." He said the words almost too fast. There was no way that Kaiser would stoop to this. Uber and Leet were a joke, Kaiser would rather eat his own thumbs than go to them with his hat in his hand, Danny was sure of it. And by specifying the tinker in question, Danny made sure that Kaiser would have to pay whatever the two minor villains demanded as a price, no matter how outrageous.

"I'd have preferred you just ask for a few hundred thousand dollars in small unmarked bills," the crime lord retorted.

"I understand that," the Wharf Rat said. "But I don't have any more use for a few million dollars than anyone else, and I do have need of Leet and Uber, only them." The thought of 'a few hundred thousand dollars' made his heart lurch, and he was sorely tempted. It could solve so many problems, get his daughter into Arcadia, start a fund for the ferry, take time off work, anything like that. But if Kaiser didn't want to do it, that was what he would push. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel, Kaiser would turn him down and Wharf Rat would stay uninvolved in Empire internal politics without snubbing Kaiser by giving him a flat no.

"Fine. If it has to be them," Kaiser said. "I'll make the calls, I'll get in touch with them. I'll have them call you on this line to get the specifics of your order. After you've put in your order, you do the job, and then they come through on their end of the deal. Sound good?"

 _It sounds too good,_ Danny thought. _Why couldn't you offer me a shoddy deal that I could turn down?_ "It sounds good to me," he said. "I'll call you for the instructions after they've taken my order." _Damn. Damn. Damn._

They made pleasant goodbyes, and hung up. Danny Hebert put down his kickstand, stepped off the bike, took several steps to the side, and vomited into an open garbage can. He spat a few times to clear the taste out of his mouth, disassembled Tattletale's phone, then got back on the bike and rode away. He needed something else to think about, something else to do. He had enough Wharf Rat for one day, he rode straight home. He would work on the tunnel-buggy and his notes, hang out with his daughter and call it a night.

He stopped at a store to pick up a replacement phone for Taylor, and three burn phones for himself. He was sick of trusting Tattletale's phone and hoping there wasn't any sort of tracker in the thing.

When he came in the door, he still looked like he'd seen a ghost. "Holy crap, Dad," Taylor said, jumping to her feet. "Are you okay?"

"I had a phone call, from Kaiser," her father said, going to the sink and pouring a glass of water. "He wanted a favor," he said, then took a long drink, swishing to get the rest of the vomit taste out of his mouth.

Taylor sat back down, relieved but also somewhat freaked out herself. "Well, what sort of favor?" she asked.

"He wanted me to take out one of his former soldiers that broke ties, to scare the rest into coming back to him," Danny told her, taking a seat in the recliner opposite her. "I named a stupid price that I thought he'd refuse, and he didn't. So now I've got a deal. With Kaiser of Empire Eighty-Eight. To help him put his team back together." He shook his head. "Oh, and I got you a new phone, and a couple spares for... well, for both of us, if we need them."

"Thanks," she said absently. "So now you're going to go capture a former Empire supervillain, as a favor to Kaiser. What did you ask?"

"He offered a few hundred thousand dollars," Danny said. "I should have taken the money. Instead I made him pay the price for a tinker invention from Uber and Leet. If I could have, I'd have asked him to take Skidmark into his gang, that's the only thing I can think of he'd hate more than dealing with those two video-game twits."

Taylor's eyes lit up. "Wait, so you've got the rights to contract a tinker-made invention from Uber and Leet, no stipulations? That's actually pretty awesome. That's actually incredibly open-ended. Some kind of machine that turns lead to gold, so you can be rich forever. Or one that makes you invisible, so you never need to worry about getting attacked again. A pocket factory that keeps the industrial district running so there's always work on the harbor. All kinds of stuff. Let's start a list!"

It turned out that was a game that middle-schoolers played, Danny learned. "What would you make if you were a tinker" was the subject of hundreds of hours of idle speculation. A magical counterfeiting machine that spits out hundreds of dollars on demand was popular for obvious reasons, and so was a gun that turned things to gold both for removing one's enemies and enriching oneself. Or a device that let one steal a cape's powers for oneself, or a cure for world hunger. But some of this turned out to be harder than expected. Leet's particular talent for tinkering was as open-ended as they come, he didn't have a specialty like Squealer's vehicles or Bakuda's bombs, but his limitation was that he could not invent anything too close to what he had already created. The more he tried to retread an idea, the more it was prone to dramatic failure or substandard performance. And after having been a professional supervillain for several years, he had a fairly big catalog of ideas he had already used.

The endless-counterfeiting machine was pretty similar to the "cheat code wallet" he had invented back during his Grand Theft Auto days, not that Danny particularly wanted one of those. The golden gun was pretty similar to the Medusa's head he had made so that Uber could simulate some game based on Jason of Troy. The power-stealing device was close to both a memory-stealing device, and also a power-nullifying device. Besides, if the Wharf Rat was known to carry a weapon as dangerous as that, every villain and hero that heard about it would come to Brockton Bay to kill him and steal it. Curing world hunger was a strong contender, but a trip through the internet showed them that Leet had tried his hand at Burger Time once before.

Leet had already made a variety of teleportation devices and invisibility belts, enough so that they tended to explode as soon as someone tried to use them now. And he had created a functioning "lead-to-gold" machine as a background prop for a heist based on a virtually-unknown handheld game based on an underground cult movie. The pocket factory seemed like a good idea in principle and theory, but neither of them could really elaborate what they wanted it to do exactly, in a way that didn't duplicate something Leet had already made.

They brainstormed, writing ideas, researching them, crossing them out. And then one entry found its way onto the page, that seemed to stand apart. It was researched, and underlined. Dozens of other ideas were scrapped, and it stood. Finally the two of them had to agree that it was the best option for them.

* * *

Friday Danny rode out to work, and stopped halfway to check Tattletale's phone. No messages, which was a good thing as far as he was concerned. He dismantled it and headed into the office. Another full day of interviews much like Thursday, except for the burgeoning anticipation and relief as the end of the day loomed nearer. He checked in with the other interviewers, reviewed their notes, approved their decisions, and then pressed the button on his phone to refer all incoming calls directly to voice mail. "Quitting time," he sighed at last.

Barry tapped on the doorframe. "Hey, we're done here. Next week, all we have to do is sit back and deal with the increased workload from putting so many of our people back to work. Now, let's put your bike in the back of my truck, and we can go get those decorations from your place and get the weekend started."

"Sounds good," Danny said, unbuttoning his shirt and untucking his shirt tails. He unchained the bike, threw it into the back of Barry's pickup, and then tucked his backpack by his feet while they drove.

"I gotta say thanks again for taking this thing off my hands," Barry said. "It was a tough time. Though, if I'd known you were going to bring in all this new work I wouldn't have worried about it. The budget's a lot easier to work with when things are flush."

"No problem," Danny chuckled.

They drove in silence some, discussing which vendor in the area had the best hot dogs or snow cones or pretzels or falafel and then lapsing back to silence. It was comfortable, companionable silence. Danny's legs ached a little, as if they knew that they should be riding right now instead of sitting down.

At the house Danny invited Barry in and handed him a beer, then headed down to the basement and came up with the banners. "Okay, we've got three of these," he said, holding up the roll. "It's about the right size for the walls of the union hall. It says 'Congratulations Wilma', and-"

"Is that calligraphy?"

"Yeah, some decorative calligraphy. Turns out it's a lot easier to do that stuff big like this, than small on a piece of normal paper. And this last one, I'm not sure if we should use or not, I got a bit carried away. It says 'Bless your family as you blessed ours'. It's kinda sappy, not sure how it'd go with that crowd."

"Holy shit Danny that's amazing. And these are the streamers, god there's hundreds of them, and how many bags of confetti?"

"Like nine or ten bags of confetti. Mostly white, but I got some color in there too just to break things up."

"Wow. Just wow man. So, uh, are you gonna be able to make it tomorrow night or are you going to be busy?"

Danny was taken aback. "Barry, we've been planning this. Wilma's one of the warmest people I know, she was almost Taylor's godmother. There's no way I'd miss this."

"Okay, I just thought you might be busy. Single-dad stuff."

Danny paused, something nagging at him. "Barry, what do you mean?"

Barry sighed, rolled his eyes, and then repeated. "I thought you might be 'busy', that's all," he said, adding the air-quotes with his fingers.

Danny Hebert froze, as he realized exactly what Barry meant. He moved a rat through the vents to confirm his suspicions, smelling Barry. "Damn," he said. "You know."

"What? Of course I know. Everyone in the office knows. Wait, you didn't know that we knew?" Barry's eyes went wide. "Oh, oh that's funny," he chuckled, then took a drink of his beer. "We know, Danny. We just try to respect your privacy. Or like, I dunno, the illusion of not knowing, get it? C'mon, man, half the time you ride north instead of heading home. You're doing the work of four men. You started leaving work early when a new superhero makes his debut in the city. You've been to the water cooler, you've seen people speculate about who any new cape is. And the first thing they do is joke about their friends and family, compare their schedule and rule them out. But we couldn't rule you out, Danny. And the rest of it just fit into place."

The recliner rushed up to catch Danny from behind. "Well shit."

"We won't tell Wilma that her banners were made by a superhero," Barry said. "Even though she'd be tickled pink. Here, have a beer."

"I'm still going to the baby shower."

"Great to hear it. We'll cover for you if you need to show up a bit late or leave a bit early."

* * *

Saturday morning the Wharf Rat got an early start, heading down to the old storage lockers in the Docks to meet with Uber and Leet. They both showed up in street clothes with caps pulled low and sunglasses on, Danny arrived in full costume. "Sorry," he said first, "I don't know the protocol for meetings like this. I'll be more discreet in the future."

"No worries," Uber said. He was tall and broad-shouldered, the physique of a bodybuilder hidden under a light sweater and baggy pants. "For what we're being paid, we'll forgive a lot."

"Do I even want to know what you two gouged Kaiser for?" the Wharf Rat chuckled.

"A hundred thousand dollars above our costs," Leet confided. He was short and slight, weedy and reedy next to the tall Adonis that was Uber. "So, to what do we owe the recognition? Normally nobody cuts either of us into a deal like this."

The Wharf Rat shrugged. "Honestly, I wanted someone that Kaiser would hate dealing with. The more arrogant and pushy he got, the more I wanted his face in the dirt. And besides, you two do actually have the skills I need, and nobody else in the city does. I'd have to contract all the way to Philadelphia to get the right person if you can't help me."

Leet puffed up some at that. "Okay, so what's the spec?"

"I want you to make something that can override holograms at a distance. Projecting my face, body, and voice through a hologram and override its original signal."

Leet seemed surprised. "That's... that's different. I don't get much call for different. Mostly people want force fields and teleporters."

"But you're good at different. Not many tinkers are," Wharf Rat pointed out.

"Yeah but, hell, nobody recognizes that fact," Uber cut in. "Hmm, that's going to take a hell of an interface. I can do the software while he builds it, do you have a preference for the input format?" Leet was a tinker that could build anything once and then never again, Uber's gimmick was that he could acquire any skill he wanted. Olympic-class skier, expert martial artist, gourmet baker, or software engineer, just by shifting his power from one to the next.

"Tablet computer, hardened connection, touchpad, with my biometrics programmed in so that it can be activated to show me in costume even if I'm not in costume," Wharf Rat replied.

"Okay, that's easier than I thought you'd ask," Uber said, nodding. "Heuristic three-dee model-mapping with fabric draping and real-time render would have been a lot of work."

Leet was still staring at him in surprise. "Kaiser contracted us for our very best work, and this is... well, it's not the grade I expected you to ask for. I thought it'd be something big, difficult, something really impressive. Are you sure that this is what you want?"

"Did I underbid?" Wharf Rat asked, abashed.

"Not entirely, I mean, I can make this a really great job if you want, I can put my A-grade work into this if it's what you want."

The rogue hero nodded. "I'm sure you'll see why soon. But I've got a question before we get to work."

"Yeah?" Uber asked.

"Are you guys getting what you want?"

Uber and Leet traded a glance. The tinker is the one who spoke. "Almost. It's happening, bit by bit. We mostly want people to appreciate video games the way that we do. Our stunts and escapades are mostly to show people that you can really live out your love for video games, but every year we see a new blockbuster game that gets better gross sales than the big movie of the year. Every year we see them move further into the mainstream, accepted by all. They've been acknowledged as a legitimate art form by the critics, and it's getting hard to find people that believe they do harm to people. And that's what we want."

Wharf Rat nodded thoughtfully. "That's an admirable goal, honestly. Just that you love something so much you want the whole world to love it. I just wonder if you're really working constructively towards that goal."

Leet rolled his eyes and half-turned as if to leave the conversation, but Uber stepped in. "What do you mean? We get tons of publicity, and our message reaches a lot of people!"

"Right, but hear me out: you guys are a genius tinker whose specialty is doing things that have never been done, and a man who can have any skill that he wants at all. Why aren't you guys making games of your own? Level design is a skill, background art is a skill, directing is a skill, voice acting and scripting... and Leet could create absolutely unique interfaces. Or a camera that automatically turns image into render and into code. Things like that."

The two stared at him skeptically, and the Wharf Rat shrugged. "Or don't mind me. Thanks for your help, guys. I'll be in touch." He walked away, checking with his rats to make sure he wasn't being watched before he slipped down a manhole in a back alleyway. He replaced the lid and then let himself down the ladder, stepping off to the side so he could keep his slippers as clean as possible. The tunnel-buggy should have been sealed with fiberglass or some composite polymer he did not understand the composition of, but he had made do with plastic sheeting wood-stapled to the body frame. It was enough to keep the interior clean and dry, but the thing looked incredibly flimsy. He opened the door, and it swung on angled hinges to let him step down comfortably and easily. He bundled his jacket and dropped it into the cargo hatch, then slid into the pilot's seat.

The interior of his mask was rubbed with camphor, the strong minty hit of it overwhelming the smell of must and mold and rotted leaves down here in the storm sewers. He wouldn't even dream of going into the sewers themselves, the sanitary sewers were incredibly unsanitary but the storm drains were just there to drain rainfall away from the city. His feet slotted into the pedals and he started to push, and the buggy moved smoothly and easily away, finding its grip with no issues. The controls were intuitive and simple, incredibly responsive. With no true windshield he could not really see where he was going, but the rats all around him navigated for him, showing him where to turn and where to veer around obstacles. He could pick his whole path without trouble, he could turn without slowing, and he could maintain awareness of his entire environment. It was the perfect patrol vehicle.

He picked up speed easily, the pedals and driveshaft turning his movement into surprising velocity. He turned, and the buggy dipped into its turn, cornering like a cat. In no time at all he was up to fifty miles an hour, shooting across the city without traffic or stop signs to slow him. He would deal with Mayor Christner soon, there was something he needed to do first: clean up the Docks.

A small brown mouse dialed the numbers on his burn phone, and held the receiver next to his mouth. "Hello, Brockton Bay police? This is the Wharf Rat. I wanted to report some crimes in progress. Do you have a pen? Good. Okay, child abuse at 2405 North Lamont Road, apartment 39. Possession of narcotics, 2405 North Lamont Road, apartment 43. Burglary of a vehicle, 2412 North Lamont road, in progress. Drug deal in progress, 2500 North Lamont Road, license plate number 545-HVC. Drunk driver, license plate number 669-OLM, currently headed north on North Lamont road, crossing Dunn. Rape in progress, 650 Dunn Road. Correction, attempted rape at that address, and a pressing need for an ambulance to save an attempted rapist covered in rat bites. Dead body at 2612 North Lamont Road, wrapped in plastic in the garage."

The Docks was hit with an invasion of cop cars, patrolmen from every neighboring district. Off-duty officers were called up, rookies were pressed into service, desk officers were put into uniform, and block by block the Wharf Rat got the undesirables out of his territory. Most of the people in the Docks were good law-abiding citizens who just didn't have the money to move. Fixed incomes, divorcees, college students, the disabled, those supporting too-large families, and others. But mixed into them were criminals who brought danger and trouble into their lives. And those criminals were being excised. The patrollers ran out of handcuffs and had to move to zip-tie restraints, patrol cars were filling their back seats with three perpetrators and then heading back to the precinct to drop off at the jail and then head back out for more. And the PRT got word that the Wharf Rat was phoning in dozens of reports, hundreds, reciting them off as fast as he could. The Protectorate patrols were redirected to take the strain off the Docks police, and the rest of the Protectorate members were called up and dispatched to help, and then the Wards. It was a law-enforcement blitz, fielding reports on a scale never seen before.

The onslaught started at ten o'clock a.m. and did not let up until four p.m., moving in a grid pattern across the district. Smart dispatchers started sending cars ahead of the grid pattern so they'd be in place when Wharf Rat told them what crimes to investigate in that region. And in the midst of it all, the Wharf Rat noticed something that chilled him through. A figure on top of a roof, wearing black with her cloak billowing around her, carrying two crossbows. The rat nearest her could smell her skin, and he recognized the smell. It was one he knew. Sophia Hess, one of the bullies who had devastated his daughter.

Taylor's tormentor was one of the Wards. His belly filled with ice and suddenly a dozen details made perfect sense. He gripped the handlebars of the tunnel-buggy and started to rush her position with tens of thousands of rats, but he checked himself, gritted his teeth and moved them slowly into position. The girl was texting on her phone, and her crossbows were leaning against the air-conditioner alongside her. Danny moved to the fire escape without hesitating, moving with stealth over speed. The rats swarmed up the building, climbing the brickwork nearly as fast as they could walk on level ground. They came up behind her, moved about carefully to their specific objective, and scouted the scene as Danny Hebert ascended the ladder. And then they struck.

The bowstrings twanged noisily, unraveling explosively before they tipped over. The girl swore noisily and bent to pick them up and examine the damage, tucking the phone away into an inside pocket. When she looked up, the Wharf Rat was in front of her, standing stock-still with his back straight, looming like a long brown shadow. "You're not supposed to carry lethal ammunition," he said sternly. "Those crossbows are a sign of trust, and you abused that trust."

"Fuck you, asshole, you shouldn't have messed with my stuff!" she snarled, lunging at him. She was younger, and extremely athletic, and well-trained. Her powers let her fight aggressively by shifting to her shadow-state rather than dodging, shifting back just in time to land a blow. And suddenly the rooftop was a tide of rats, swirling around he ankles. She shifted to shadow and the rats passed through her, leaping high to snap a kick at the older man's midsection. But he was taller with a much longer reach, a roll of quarters, and a youth spent scrapping in the Docks with as nasty a gang of hooligans as were to be found in the city. And he also had the notorious Hebert temper and she was the girl who had shoved his daughter into a locker stuffed full of used tampons left to fester for two weeks. The girl who had used her authority as a Ward to keep her and the other bullies from facing any consequences for traumatizing his daughter. He swung a big roundhouse right at where her head was going to be when she materialized.

She saw the punch coming and stayed immaterial, sliding through him, landing on the opposite side. The rats snapped and gnawed at her continuously, waiting for her to solidify so their jaws could get purchase. She stayed out of reach, glowering at him, and they were at an impasse, both glaring. Without her crossbows she could only attack him in close, and his reach gave him an edge and his rats gave him another edge. She seemed to come to a conclusion, and that conclusion was "fuck it". She charged him, arms raised for a combination. He tucked his chin to his collarbone and drove a straight right punch towards her, but she deflected it with her left while she snapped a right chop at his temple. He leaned into it, taking it across the side of his head and his ear, bringing up a knee strike.

And rats snapped at her legs, tearing through her costume and lacerating her ankles and calves, avoiding the Achilles tendon. As pissed as he was, he was not going to fight a teenage girl like he fought Lung, unless he found out that she could regenerate like Lung. She dodged the knee-kick and shot two fists into his belly, and she faded out to keep herself safe from the rats while she advanced on him. The rats flooded away, clearing plenty of space between the two of them while he pulled himself to a crouch, gasping for air. The shadow-girl stomped closer, cracking her knuckles to make sure he understood what was coming. And then he opened his hand and let something roll out of it onto the roof between them. He crushed his eyes closed and put up an arm to protect them as the tinker-made flashbomb went off. The light was searing, the bare parts of his wrist and fingers felt sunburned.

Shadow Stalker, on the other hand, seemed to be very vulnerable to megawatt flashes of light, she was dropped to the ground shivering and shuddering all over, with smoke swirling up from the frayed edges of her costume. He squatted down next to her. "You're a psycho. You're a sadistic bitch who should be in the damn Birdcage. You got handed a second chance with the Wards, and you're abusing that to smirch their good name and turn their good intentions to violence and corruption. Drop out of the Wards, and go find a shrink that will help you stop being such a fucking psycho," he said. "And if you ever go out on patrol with lethal ammunition again, I'm going to find out how many rats you can feed and still get healed."

He stood up and stepped back, then tapped his earpiece to open the channel to the police line again. "I've got a Ward here with illegal weapons, on the roof of 750 Leaven Avenue. She's subdued, needs medical assistance." And then he got on the ladder, climbing down, still reciting off crimes for the police to deal four in the afternoon, he had finished each block of the district, and the jails were bursting full of crooks that had made the Docks their home. And Danny Hebert felt a little better, some of that karmic squeamishness in his belly was alleviated. He had felt wrong ever since he got a phone call from Kaiser, but this helped a little. And if he could help Taylor out with Sophia the bully and Shadow Stalker the alter ego that protected the bully, he would feel better yet.

But one thing to do first.

The Armsmaster was leaning against his motorcycle waiting for the next call when the PRT officer on the dispatch console transferred an incoming call to his helmet's communicator. "Armsmaster?"

"Speaking," Colin said. The voice was familiar.

"It's the Wharf Rat again," said the other voice, and it clicked into place. "Just wanted to let you know that I'm done for the day, everyone can stand down. And, there's one more thing."

"What one thing? And what the hell did you do to Shadow Stalker?" The Armsmaster demanded, but his attention went to the side of the road, where four big brown rats were climbing out of the storm drain carrying a piece of paper. It was a thick bundle, a broad piece folded in quarters. "Is this yours?"

"I hit her with a flashbang grenade. I did not realize that the light was going to affect her like that. Did you recover the evidence that she's been suborning the terms of her probation?"

"We did. Fingerprints confirmed that it wasn't planted," Armsmaster said. "She's getting treatment by healers, and we're going to have a very strong talk with her. This won't happen again."

Wharf Rat sighed. "It'll happen again the moment she feels she can get away with it," he predicted. "You need to get her out of your group, you know she's got a problem."

"You nearly burned her to death," Armsmaster said. "You assaulted a duly-authorized representative of the PRT in the commission of her duties. The fact that she was carrying broadhead bolts was the only reason we're not opening a manhunt for you."

"Look, just open the question of whether or not she should be authorized to represent you. Open that question, compare the evidence, and you'll be siding with me in no time," Wharf Rat said. Now, let's get back to these Squealer designs. It's the Protectorate's now," Wharf Rat said. "Not long ago I let your guys to Squealer's garage. But she also had some blueprints, and this is one of them. It's a vertical-take-off-and-landing aircraft, carries a dozen people, perfect for in-city use. More to the point, it's perfect for a quick-response force of superheroes."

"You want me to make this thing?" Armsmaster asked, taking the paper from the rats.

"I really do. Look, the problem with patrolling for crime is that you guys aren't good at it. Me, I'm good at it," the Wharf Rat said modestly. "Heck, the cops are good at patrolling for crime. Giving the citizens of the city a number to call for help is a great idea. But you guys need a way to get anywhere in the city, fast. This thing is part one of that goal. Part two is Vista. She can contract space, especially space that nobody is in. Put her on a light plane or glider, and she can contract the empty space above the buildings and speed up your response times by an order of magnitude. I'm talking about the Protectorate being able to get anywhere in this city in two or three minutes. With that sort of response time, you could-"

"We could win every super-battle in the city," Armsmaster said, nodding along. "Look, the plane is good, and Vista is good. But this is a procedural change. This is about undoing the normal operations of the Protectorate. These procedures were developed by Legend and Eidolon and Alexandria. And our Director is particularly resistant to change, and particularly resistant to suggestions from us. Heck, even the head of our image department is going to be foursquare against this, he thinks the patrols are about increasing our visibility and public relations."

"The best PR is a good track record," the Wharf Rat retorted. "Winning and capturing criminals is going to do a lot more good than staged appearances and street patrols."

Armsmaster chuckled. "You're not wrong. Maybe I can play Glenn off against the Director. Wouldn't that be something to see? Anyway, thanks for the input."

"No problem. But, one more thing?"

"I should expect it at this point. What've you got?" Colin asked.

"There's a really good chance that sometime very very soon I'll be coming to blows with someone from Empire Eighty-Eight. I'll either need assistance in transporting a prisoner, or I may even need assistance on the takedown. Or possibly a rescue."

"What the hell man? Nobody gets in this much trouble but you," Armsmaster half-yelled into the mouthpiece. His frustration was showing. "You know something? This is exactly why we try to recruit people into the Protectorate. Vigilante rogues wind up like this. They either burn out and get killed in the first couple months, or they wind up going full-on villain. And you, Wharf Rat, are looking like the kind that burns out early and gets killed."

"Does that mean you won't help?"

"No it doesn't," the hero sighed. "Just... c'mon, man, straighten up and fly right."

"I'll try. I still intend to join your group once I've done what I have to do. And again, I'm sorry that every time we meet I'm telling you how to do your job."

Armsmaster disconnected the call, and shook his head. The Wharf Rat really did have a bad habit of acting like he knew the best way to do other people's jobs. But the idea of a Protectorate quick-response force was alluring. No more patrols, no more wasting dozens of hours every week just traveling around the city to maybe catch one mugger or a few drunk drivers. The heroes moving straight from one catch to another, jumping directly into situations the cops couldn't handle safely. Using their time better, less wear and tear on their gear.. it was tempting.

The tunnel buggy was stashed in a narrow side tunnel behind a hinged grate a block from his house. He checked that nobody was watching, then he crawled up the ladder and out the manhole, dressed in jogging clothes with a backpack on. He jogged home, and met Taylor at the door.

"You're on the news in a big way," Taylor said. "Over two-thousand arrests, of which an estimated one-thousand are going to definitely see jail time. It's historic, and the local news anchors are competing to see who can give this story the best title. One of them is claiming this will go down in law enforcement history as the Brockton Bay Bust, but the other channel is calling it Rock the Docks."

Danny chuckled and gave her a hug. She cautiously hugged him back. "Oh, thank god you don't smell like sewer," she said. "I was worried what you'd smell like."

"I didn't go near sewage," Danny promised her. "Just storm drains. Don't you know the difference?"

"In a vague academic way?" Taylor shrugged, and gestured a flip-flopping hand for "so-so".

He chuckled again, and headed inside. "I've gotta get a shower, and then I'm heading out to the baby shower. Are you gonna be okay on your own?"

"Yeah, sure, I was just gonna call some friends for a sleepover."

"I don't even care if you're sarcastic or not," he said, grinning as he dropped his backpack on the floor and opened the basement door. "If you want friends over, go for it. If you go out, give me a call and let me know where you're going, okay?" He handed the backpack to the rats on the top step and started to turn away, then froze. "Whoa," he breathed aloud, his gaze turned inward. His face was slack with surprise.

"Dad?" Taylor said. "Dad, what is it?" His reaction filled her with a fast panic, and it only stilled a few seconds later when he shook off his fugue and looked at her.

"Hey, Taylor, come see something with me," he said, and led the way out the back door and through the yard. Two lots down, was the undeveloped lot that he often sent the rats rushing off to when he was emptying the basement out. And hidden in the tall grass were a bunch of tree branches laying close together at odd angles. He bent down and lifted one, it was gnawed all over by distinctive rodent teeth patterns. And the shape of it was arched, an elegant curve of oak wood with a notch at the middle for a pin-and-barrel hinge and holes on either end to take a bolt and washer. He turned the strut one way then the other. "This is from the nose section of the tunnel buggy," he said. "It's almost perfect. And I didn't do this."

Taylor stared at him, then the strut. "So, the rats did this on their own? Like, while you were asleep?"

"Asleep, or when I was away," Danny said, as he concentrated. "Hang on, there's... oh, there they are," he said, as a dozen small rodents came out of the tall grass. Taylor suppressed a moment of panic, the fear of rats was deeply ingrained. These were juveniles, but not babies. Probably born in the last couple of months. Danny reached down and scooped them up, and brought them up to his face, staring at them as they stared at him. "Taylor, these guys are ... they're smart. Not 'Secret of NIMH' smart, but they're aware of me. I.. I think this is really something here. I think these guys were born while my powers were active, and they were linked to my mind when they were delivered, and through most of their infancy. These guys are different."

"Different how?" Taylor asked.

"Well, for one thing I can read their minds," Danny said, in awe. "And it's weird."

His daughter looked at him strangely. "Yeah, dad. You can read rats' minds. It's your superpower, remember? The thing you do, the Wharf Rat?"

"No, these guys are different. Normally I can read a rat's senses, all of them, and I can control the rat's body, all of it. Even the parts they can't control consciously. But that's not the same thing. This guy here, I can see his memories. I can see how he feels about things. I can see how his mind is different when my power is turned on and when it's off. He remembers what happens when I'm in control, and he came back here and did it some more. No, he got the other rats to do it with him. He was... he was using his own pheromones and normal rat communication to guide the other rats to do the right things. He and his brothers and sisters here all did it."

Taylor shook her head. "Hey, dad, plenty of time to think about that later. Shower now, baby shower after, then other superhero stuff. Go, get, wash." She shooed him out of the empty lot and back to the house.

* * *

"Did you see her face?" Barry asked, passing his buddy a beer in a red solo cup.

"I thought she might have the baby right there on the doorway out of sher shock," Danny chuckled. "The place looks good. The tablecloths look new, the centerpieces look good. If you hadn't told me they were the same centerpieces spray-painted green and white, I would not have known. You did a hell of a job setting this up."

"Thanks for the banners," Barry said, nodding modestly. "She loved them, by the way. And the streamers. And we've got enough confetti left over for next time."

Danny nodded, looking around. Friends all around, people as close as brothers and sisters. He had made it his job to take care of them and the brotherhoood that kept them together. "Barry, how do things look for next week?"

"Busy as hell," Barry said, pitching his voice to carry over the music. "I've got to adjust every item in our budget for the rest of the year. The benefits department is going to be eyeball-deep in work all week just keeping up with your hires. The chapter president is going to have to go out with the inspectors to make sure the union agreements are upheld to the letter and the contracts are fulfilled. It's gonna be bonkers. For everyone but you," he added. "You, on the other hand, could probably take the whole week off and everyone would be too busy to even notice, as long as you keep up your email from home."

Danny laughed aloud, and clapped the larger man on the shoulder. "I think I can do that."

"Then do it," Barry said, nudging his with his elbow. "You've earned at least a vacation, maybe more. Especially today, with the Brockton Bay Bust." He paused, waving to a colleague that was walking past towards the kegs, then Barry turned back to Danny. "You know, even if you hadn't saved us this last week with the factory deal, we'd probably still cut you a vacation. A lot of folks, they think that it would be our privilege to help you out with what you do, even if you weren't helping us."

"I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm still going to do a fair job for my fair pay," Danny waved modestly.

Barry cleared his throat. "I _said_ , Danny, that a lot of the people in this room would be _honored_ if there was some way we could help you with what you _do_ out there."

"Oh. Oh!" Danny said, startled by the idea. "That's.. that's really unexpected. And really gratifying, I'm flattered. Honored. And... and I may very well take you up on that. Maybe even very soon. Nothing dangerous, but there may come a point where I can't do everything myself, and when that comes-"

"Ask. Don't hesitate to ask, just ask," Barry said, clapping him on the shoulder. "You do good for people, Danny, let people help you.


	6. Chapter 6

Sunday dawned dank and dim, low-hanging overcast that threatened rain but never really came through. It was a great day for staying home and hanging out with his daughter. But as a precaution, Danny rode a couple miles from the house and assembled Tattletale's phone, and checked it for messages.

"Today is the day, Wharf Rat. Crusader is visiting a woman and her two children in their apartment. Do not harm the woman or children at all. Crusader will not flee the scene, he thinks you are there to assassinate the family not him, so he will stand to protect them. And if you take him out, captured or killed, our agreement is satisfied and you will have my lasting promise not to interfere in the Docks or their people in any way." And then there was an address, with an apartment number on the penthouse level, one of those high-rises that has four penthouse apartments instead of just one.

Danny sighed as he packed his things. "Sorry Taylor, I thought this was going to be our day. But I've got all this week to myself. It can be just like old times all this week, if you like."

She twisted at the soda bottle in her hand. "I think I'd like that. It's been kinda hard to get time with you lately," she said.

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry this takes me away from us. I've missed you, baby."

"Missed you too," she said, hugging him. "Now, it's a promise. I get you from the time I come home from school until I go to bed, Monday through Friday. No disappearances and no patrols during those hours. Do hero stuff during the day then come home to hang out, or sleep while I'm gone and do hero stuff all night, I don't care."

"Promise," he said, and gave her a hug back. "Now then, I've gotta go beat up a white-supremacist supervillain in a downtown condo without hurting any bystanders. Wish me luck."

"Luck," she said, grinning, and he jogged out the door. A dozen juvenile rats were waiting for him at the end of the driveway, and he surreptitiously paused to let them scramble up his legs and into his cargo pockets. Ten minutes later they were loaded into the cargo hatch of the tunnel-buggy, and he was riding away.

The building was impressive. It was expensive, but tastefully understated in a way that appealed to people who had enough money that they didn't need to worry about how much things cost, but didn't want to be associated with tacky displays of wealth. It was modern, with classical elements like a doorman and a concierge. But both the doorman and the concierge were armed. And in the mechanical room, there was a technician working hard to find out why the building had lost power entirely, making little headway. Twenty stories up, Crusader was holed up with a woman, a teenager, and an infant. The apartment was virtually filled with Crusaders, his ghost duplicates with their helmets and capes, shields and spears. They marched or floated, investigating every room and every entrance. The windows were closed up tight and the blinds were shut, and the doors were well guarded. The phantom warriors floated up into the ceiling and poked their head into the vents, making sure that those entrances were empty as well.

They didn't step outside the apartment, lest the neighbors realize that notorious supervillain Crusader was on the premises, but they guarded it from the inside as much as possible. Each of the phantoms was just as solid or not as it chose, effectively invulnerable, able to stick a spear into an enemy and then turn it solid long enough to penetrate any armor and kill any foe. They could fly, even carrying Crusader himself to fly him away. They were each as intelligent as himself, and he was somewhat aware of everything they saw and heard and thought. He could address threats from any number of directions, and destroy nearly any attacker. In many ways he combined all the strengths of the Wharf Rat and Lung. If Kaiser had deliberately picked the one Empire soldier that Wharf Rat would be most hard-pressed to defeat, he would have picked Crusader.

The building was a fortress against conventional threats, and Crusader's ghosts were sticking their heads into walls to see if anything crawled through the insulation or the ceiling panels. Justin himself was in plainclothes, leaning against the kitchen counter with no regard for the phantoms packed so tightly that one could not help standing inside one of them. Kayden Anders stood in front of him, her arms crossed and her brow furrowed in a glare. The conversation was undercut by a long, constant droning of a baby's wail. "You have to give me one room, Justin. I can't stop Aster crying until she's got a room of her own without your warriors shoving themselves into everything."

Justin raised an eyebrow. "Kayden, they're coming now. I can't clear a room. I can't leave a corner. Have you read about this Wharf Rat? He beat Lung in front of his men, made him crawl away like a baby, and then after the gang fell apart he took Bakuda and Lung out at the same time, brought the building down on them. They never found Oni Lee, maybe he got away. But if something like Oni Lee runs away and doesn't come back, he knows something we don't know. Taking out the Fifth Street Merchants isn't a big deal, but he did it in five minutes during rush hour like it was nothing. This guy, he susses out weaknesses, he sees everything. If I give him one opportunity to get in, he's getting in. I have to be everywhere, and I have to watch everything. If I give you a room where Aster is comfortable, that's exactly where he's going to come in."

Kayden sighed. "It's been three hours, Justin. If not her room, can I have a room? Maybe the bathroom, it's away from the windows and exterior doors." She brushed a limp brown lock back behind her ear. Three hours without power, the apartment was getting pretty stuffy and humid.

"No way," Justin said. "Rats can swim up pipes, the bathroom is the least safe room in the apartment. Look, maybe you can put her in the middle of the room, and I'll surround the sides to keep the walls clear, and check the floor for crawlspaces. But I have to keep people on the vents. If that's good enough, I can get you a space for a while. But not much, and not long. If he gets past my perimeter, I want to guarantee I've got a shield between you and anything else."

She leaned back and grimaced. "Paranoid?"

"I've been hearing tiny sneaky claws in the vents for an hour. And something metallic, I think chains. Sometimes electronic beeping. I peek out the windows and I see lasers sweeping around from the next rooftop. We're boxed in by snipers while he invades the building. Do you know how he took out the Merchants? With a bomb he stole from Bakuda. He stole bombs from Bakuda, the tinker mad-bomber. And now he's decided to cut the Empire in half. If he takes you out, Geoff and Dorothy will walk away, and that's three of the biggest hitters in the Empire gone, four including me," he said.

She looked up at the lights, still dim and dark. "Damn this power outage. He has to be behind that too," she sighed. The day was dark and overcast, no sunlight for her to charge up. She had halogen lights stored around for emergencies, but they didn't run on batteries. She was powerless right now, there was no charge left over from yesterday's sun. "He had his rats chew through the cables or something."

"Paranoid?" he mirrored back at her, smiling.

"Fine," she said. "One room, one hour. I just need to get her to stop crying so she can eat something."

Aster had finally stopped crying, five minutes later, while Justin and Theo looked at each other from opposite sides of the kitchen island. "Ice cream's gonna melt," Justin pointed out.

"I'm okay," Theo said cautiously.

"What, healthy boy like you?" Justin said, smirking at the overweight boy. "Sure you want some ice cream before it melts."

The phone rang, and Theo jumped back. Justin picked it up. "Anders residence," he said pleasantly.

"Let's speak quietly and civilly, shall we?" said the voice on the other side of the line. "Wouldn't want the baby to get upset again."

Justin snarled, and glared at Theo, jerking his thumb to tell the boy to leave. The round-faced teenager fled, and Justin turned back to the phone. The Wharf Rat had casually mentioned the baby just to prove to him that he could get close, that his rats were close already, and that Justin's precautions were useless.

"Wharf Rat?"

"The same. Crusader?"

"Indeed. What do you want?"

"I want you to go to the window, and look outside, down at the sidewalk."

Justin, the Crusader, did just that, parting the blinds an inch for a second. "Lots of people down there."

"Lots of Miss Anders' neighbors down there. We've evacuated the building, except for your building," the Wharf Rat said.

"How did you find us?" Crusader demanded.

"Every organization has a rat. I specialize in rats," the other voice said.

Crusader paused, thinking hard. "Shit, Victor," he grunted. "Fine, I'll just grab Kayden and the kids and fly right out of here," he retorted.

"Going where? Where that I won't find you? Where are you going to land without getting attention?" the Wharf Rat countered. "A safehouse? A rendezvous?"

Justin turned in place, running a hand through his hair. "I won't let you put her in jail. She needs that kid, the kid needs her. It won't happen. Even if you bomb out this whole building, I'll figure something out."

"You sound like a man with a purpose," the Wharf Rat said. "And that's a dangerous sort of man. But, maybe a reasonable sort of man?"

Justin paused, his eyes flicking from side to side. "What are you thinking, Rat?" he snarled.

"I'll give her a pass. Her and the kids. I'll back off, and never come back to this place. Not just safe today, but from this point forward."

"Why would you do that?" Crusader demanded.

"Because I won't leave here empty-handed. Because I understand mothers and children. Because men like you can face prison far more easily than she can," the Wharf Rat said, his voice even.

"I... dammit," Crusader muttered, glancing around. "If I go, there's nobody to.." he tapered off, his voice fading. He glanced around. His phantoms were watching over Kayden and Aster, even Theo. If he made the wrong move today, everything was lost. If he made the right move, there was a shot for the future. He picked up a pen and carried it to Kayden's refrigerator, adding a note to her grocery list. 'Car Batteries'. He sighed. "Okay. I'll turn myself in. And your word as a man that you won't ever come back here."

"Done," the Wharf Rat said. "Downstairs, to the PRT van, and we can talk there, face to face."

The ghostly warriors vanished, all at once. Kayden looked up from the baby, startled, and she poked her head out of the bedroom just in time to see the front door swing closed. Crusader stepped out into the hall and saw nothing out of place except for a large cardboard box on a trolley in the hallway, at the junction of the four hallways leading to the four penthouse apartments. He stared at it, wondered what sort of bomb it had in it. Then he got on the elevator and rode it down. It did not stop at all, there was nobody else in the building. He could smell wet fur in the narrow cab, as if the elevator had been used to ferry thousands of rats up and down the building all through the morning. The elevator dinged and the doors opened, he stepped out with his hands behind his head. A PRT containment team was parked at the curb with the back doors of their van standing open. They waved him through, and he stepped from the street to the step and up into the back of the van, seating himself on a bench. He cooperated as the team fitted him with a shock collar and a monitor, he would be knocked unconscious instantly if he tried to form his ghostly duplicates. Then they sprayed him with containment foam as a final measure, rather unnecessarily. He was covered to his neck with the spreading, hardening foam.

He sat in place, visions of his freedom flitting through his mind. He was going to the Birdcage, he knew it. If they only charged him with things they could prove he did, he had earned the superhuman prison four or five times over. Outside the van was a low conversation of murmurs, and then a man stepped up the back ramp and took a seat opposite Crusader. The man was tall and lean, almost lanky, with a brown featureless mask and clear lenses over the eyes. He wore a functional outfit of brown and tan, with a tan overcoat to his ankles and a loop of chain wrapped around his torso like an ammo belt. The Wharf Rat looked at Crusader, silently for a few seconds, then he spoke.

"You did a noble thing today," the Wharf Rat said.

"It's a noble intention, at least," Crusader said. "I'm trusting you to keep your word. This has to be more than a gesture, I want you to leave them alone."

"I can promise that easily," the Wharf Rat answered him. "I have no idea who those people are. I was just after you. I'm probably never coming back to this building."

"Just me?" Crusader said, slumping back. "You know that... that actually makes it better. Thank you."

"I'm sorry that I tricked you into thinking I was after the woman and her children," Wharf Rat said. "It was underhanded of me."

Crusader tried to shrug. "It was. But every man winds up sometime asking himself if he would sacrifice himself for others. Not even for love, but for respect. And I've got my answer: when the chips are done I do the right thing. That tells me a lot about myself."

"Philosophical," Wharf Rat said. "I don't think I will be able to visit you, nor would it be appropriate. But, maybe one day you'll get a letter when I get my own answer to that question."

"I'd shake your hand, but that's out of the question," Crusader said. "Now get out of here, right now I'm in shock but in a few minutes I'm going to be blindingly pissed off at you."

Wharf Rat stepped out of the van and watched as two of the PRT soldiers stepped into the back to guard him while the others buttoned up the back and secured it, then drove off. In his earpiece, his daughter's voice came in. "Okay, I'm curious how you pulled that off. Explain it to me."

"What is there? I spent three hours laying out psychological warfare, isolating the target and giving him noises to jump at, getting him to speculate what my plans were until he was sure I was a mastermind. The tension turned them against each other and undercut his nerve even more. Then I called him up and gave him a way out. More to the point, I gave him a _brave_ way out. I kept emphasizing that he was a man, and should do what men do, then I gave him a way to protect the woman and kids. He's old-fashioned enough for that to work." He walked away, ducking into alleys to lose sight of anyone that may be watching.

"That's really low."

"It is. But even worse, it's the kind of trick that only works once. He'll talk to someone before his trial, he gets phone calls and all that stuff. Word will be out right away that I'm a tricky jerk who will bluff someone to get them to surrender. From here on out, I'm going to have to fight it out for real. No more easy wins for me."

"Maybe you should have held that trick in reserve then," Taylor proposed.

"Nah, this was the right time for it," he said. "I'm still a bit of a mystery figure around here, but as more information became available it would be harder to bluff someone like Crusader." He wasn't sure if he was explaining to her or convincing himself. He slipped down a manhole and into the storm drains, walking the tunnels to the spot he'd left the tunnel buggy. For two hundred yards in either direction, he could see and sense every rat as if they were extensions of his own body. Their position, their facing, everything they perceived. It gave him a mental map of the tunnels that was second to none.

He slotted himself in, and fit his feet to the pedals before he shut the door. He started pushing, his feet tracing and elliptical track that turned the crankshaft almost frictionlessly and drove the eight tires. He barely worked up a sweat, the buggy was easier to push than his bicycle. His breath came through evenly, only a bit deeper than his resting respiration. And yet he could tell that he was moving with shocking speed, enough so that he should probably be glad that he could not see for himself. The lack of a windshield may be to his advantage in the end.

Shortly before noon he was underneath the mayor's home, sending up a special cadre of rats. The juveniles whose minds he could more easily access had been brought with him, and half of them went up through the tunnels of the home. The house was large and ranging, shot through with crawlspaces and maintenance hatches and steam tunnels and and gaps between radiator pipes and the floorboards. Practically a freeway for rats. He positioned the juveniles in the house, the generation raised in his influence, and had them monitor the comings and goings below, staying out of sight but paying attention to what they saw and heard and smelled. The other rats in the region brought them food at need, and he had them lay down pheromones to reinforce that behavior. It took some doing to balance it all and double-check his results. Then he moved on to the next address on his list, the mayor's aging parents in an upscale retirement home. It took a little time to arrange the rats there, to get them to only watch over the particular residents that he was interested in. And finally the mayor's sister, living in an upper-middle-class house in an upper-middle-class neighborhood with a picture of domestic bliss, one husband one daughter one dog. One of these places had the key to the mayor's secret, the mystery of the mission one-point-nine million dollars.

Then he looped himself around and headed for the business district downtown, looking for an office building with plenty of computers left logged on over the weekend. He wound up back at the engineering company he had visited before for information on Mayor Christner and Lung, but today he was researching Shadow Stalker. He ran into a lot of roadblocks, a lot of missing information. It was common for the PRT to do that for the Wards, to keep their families safe, but this seemed excessive. They were masking a lot more information than usual. That was pretty inconvenient. He turned north and pedaled off, through the tunnels to the Docks.

The district seemed more subdued than usual, people were moving along the sidewalks with their heads down, there was tense silence in their homes. Conversations were more terse and abrupt, there were more sudden silences. More of the houses smelled of fear, and he saw more people watching the dark corners suspiciously. "Shit," he sighed.

"What's up Dad?"

"It's the Docks. This place looks like Soviet Russia during the gulag years. I haven't seen or heard anyone smiling or laughing since I got here."

"What? Why?"

"Because of me, Taylor," he said sadly. "Because I arranged a police occupation yesterday. Because of two-thousand arrests. Because I violated people's privacy en masse to find the criminals among them. Right now everyone's scared of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing. They're scared they'll step out of line and I'll catch them," he rolled to a stop, and folded his arms and braced his chin on top of them. "Not everyone here had someone they know get arrested. But everyone has someone they know that knows someone who was arrested. People want the rapists and murderers busted, but I went after drunk drivers and drug dealers too, and that's just too big a job. And I went too far, I got people in their homes. I've lost their trust. They were happy when I got rid of Lung and Skidmark, but now they think I'm just as bad."

"Maybe next time you go law-dog in a big way, you stick with violent crimes and major crimes," Taylor suggested. "If you do that a couple times, they should see that first time as an anomaly. Give them a chance to learn to trust."

"Meh. Maybe I should just quit out this entire idea of holding the Docks and protecting them. I've already got Empire promising not to move in on it, the Merchants are gone, the ABB is gone. If I just quit patrolling and join the Protectorate full time, everyone will be fine here."

"Are you sure you don't want to finish what you started with the ABB first? Or maybe take out the Undersiders or Travelers just to be on the safe side?"

"Funny."

"I know. But really though, you've had the Docks for two weeks. You worked hard up to this point, maybe you could enjoy a week's worth of patrolling a peaceful territory," Taylor said. "You've earned it. And besides, you need to put in your two-weeks notice at work before you join the Protectorate."

"Are you talking me out of it?"

"No, I'm saying that once you join you're in. You won't ever be the rogue hero, the vigilante again. Make sure you get what you want from it before you walk away from it forever."

Danny chuckled. "You've been listening to me too much."

"Maybe," his daughter retorted. "But waiting three weeks before you make a lifetime commitment is not too much to ask."

He considered it. "You're a smart kid, Taylor. Okay, I'm heading home. Let's have a chill evening together, and a normal week as a family."

* * *

Monday at noon, Danny was scowling as he let himself out of the tunnel-buggy. "This was supposed to be a quiet week," he grumbled in his mask. Taylor was at school, so there was nobody listening in on his bluetooth and he was talking to himself. He climbed a ladder to a manhole and let himself out onto the back alleyway. The far end of the alley was illuminated by strobing red and blue lights from around the corner, and he approached those lights with his hand resting on the strap of the cooler that was over his shoulder.

The scene was a mess, the Central Bank of Brockton Bay with police tape spread all around, broken glass everywhere, shattered furniture inside and a dozen officers interviewing witnesses outside. The PRT had pushed the SWAT trucks further back, and the Protectorate was on the scene. Wharf Rat walked up alongside Miss Militia, the second-in-command of the Protectorate East-North-East team. "Afternoon," he said to her, and she whirled in place with a huge nickel-plated revolver in her hand. Wharf Rat stared at her a second, then raised his hands. "Looks like a bank robbery to me," he prompted.

"You're the Wharf Rat," she said, holstering the weapon. As soon as her hand was off of it, it turned itself into a knot of green-and-black energy and swirled around, transforming briefly into a grenade pinned to her uniform and then a rifle slung across her back. When she spoke it puffed against the American-flag bandanna she wore on the bottom half of her face.

He nodded. "I am. Have you eaten? It's about lunch time and you've been busy." He opened the cooler and handed her a sandwich wrapped in clear plastic.

"Thank you," she said in her accented voice. "Armsmaster has told us about your assistance before." She unwrapped the sandwich and raised it behind her bandanna, managing to eat while masked much more efficiently than Danny had ever learned to do.

"I was surprised that he's not here," Wharf Rat said, looking around.

She snorted. "Back in his lab. We've got you to thank for that, by the way, he used to be last to leave every crime scene and now he's spending more time coordinating from the rear than leading from the front. Anyway, the Undersiders hit the bank about an hour ago, fought the Wards, escaped, and now we're left with nothing but a humiliating debacle."

"Undersiders?" Danny scowled again. "I made a promise to Tattletale that I wouldn't snoop around them or follow them to their hideout. If I'd known this was an Undersider operation I wouldn't even have come. Sorry, I can't help you with this."

"You talked to Tattletale? You could have intel we don't have, and that might not break your agreement. And," Miss Militia considered, "can you help us with Circus as well? She was with them, and if you didn't promise her anything, you may still be able to help."

"Let's walk while we talk," Wharf Rat said, patting his cooler. The two of them walked to where Assault and Battery were sorting through a huge pile of broken glass. He handed them a sandwich each, which they took after a nod from Miss Militia. "Tattletale is a thinker, definitely. I think her power is that she can guess really well. She's not entirely accurate or entirely reliable, she's slipped a few times, but she knows a hell of a lot more than she should. And she's a gifted cold-reader, she can Sherlock Holmes you right there where you stand. She's tight lipped, doesn't give up many secrets of her own. Bitch apparently turns regular dogs into giant monsters. The four of them travel by bounding on rooftops, sometimes banking off of walls and stuff like it was parkour. The dogs smell like a ton of raw meat, slightly rotten, after she's grown them."

"Bitch?" Miss Militia repeated, puzzled, before she put it together for herself. "Oh, Hellhound."

"They're kids," Wharf Rat said, handing a wrapped sandwich to Velocity and another to Dauntless. "Sixteen or so, I'd guess. They should be in schools. Bi- Hellhound has a real problem with authority, it would be easy to wedge her out of the group. I haven't met the other two. And when I was chatting with them, I asked if they reported to someone else or if they were leading themselves. Bi- Hellhound, sorry again, responded with "f you, f him, and f this" before she tore out of there. So they've got a patron, male, who is causing some friction in their group."

"We suspected there was someone else," Miss Militia said. "They are kids, like you said, and small-timers at that, but when they came together they suddenly became a lot more effective than they'd been before. And a lot of what they do seems more big-picture than we should expect from them. But what you've given us already helps us."

Wharf Rat zipped his cooler shut. "What happened here? The witnesses look really, really freaked out, even for a bank robbery."

"What do you know about the Undersiders?" Dauntless asked, from Danny's other shoulder.

"Not a lot. Power breakdowns, relative timeline, I've probably forgotten some details," the taller older man said.

Dauntless shook his head and blew out a frustrated breath. "Every villain you fight will feel different, especially villain teams. Fighting the Empire Eighty-Eight, for example, feels like a car crash that keeps going on and on. Kaiser and Hookwolf put sharp metal everywhere and you have to keep moving, keep dodging to stay ahead of it. Rune throws garbage trucks at you, or chunks of building the same size, everything shakes, it's unbelievably loud, incredibly disorienting. Fenja and Menja feel like they're always right behind you, three stories tall and armed to the teeth. Othala always has Viktor on super-speed or pyrokinesis or some other power, and with Krieg everything happens too fast and you can't even draw a breath. Like a car crash, right at the moment of impact, over and over and on and on. Got it? Now, fighting the Undersiders isn't like that. It's like a nightmare, or a horror movie. What happens in a horror movie? It's dark and you can't see, there's something huge and terrible chasing you, you're in the worst possible place, and then suddenly you can't run anymore because your legs don't work. Grue, Hellhound, Tattletale and Regent. Thanks to their thinker, everything goes wrong for us and goes right for them. Thanks to their shaker, you're blind and worse than blind, also deaf and dizzy and confused. One of their masters sends a giant skinless monster after you, and the other one makes your leg go the wrong way so you fall down, or your hand opens so you drop your weapon. It doesn't feel like fighting four teenagers, it feels like your nightmares all came to life all at once," he finished, and looked around. "Fighting them is not a job for the Wards. And it certainly is too much for civilians caught in the middle of all this."

Wharf Rat considered that. "Hmm. Too bad you can't turn that on them."

Miss Militia and Dauntless shared a glance. "What do you mean?"

"Well, not the Protectorate. You guys have a speedster, two speedster-slash-scrappers, two blaster and a blaster-slash-scrapper, and a tinker who mostly acts as a scrapper. You guys are more like the car crash that just goes on and on, over and over. But the Wards? They could be a nightmare like the Undersiders. Aegis's power is basically just Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. Shadow Stalker is the enemy that is always behind you, or above you, or around the corner. Gallant literally can shoot fear at people. Vista is the hallway that never seems to end, the ground that trips you when you run. Clockblocker is every door that can't be opened and every window that can't be broken. Browbeat isn't just a hitter, he's also a biokinetic, I'm sure he can put on a very scary face. Kid Win is a tinker, and tinkers can be anything at all."

Dauntless chuckled. "It's an interesting idea. But our PR guys would ... object strenuously if we suggested terrifying villains into surrendering by emulating horror movies. And also, we'd pretty much have to get the Undersiders in a trap, and they've never fallen for anything like that before."

Danny shrugged. "Well, it was only half an idea, no worries. Sounds like a much better plan would be 'divide and conquer'. Their tactics fall apart with the loss of any one member of their group."

Miss Militia idly examined the clip of her semi-automatic handgun. "Well, you're in the best position to make that happen, since you're on speaking terms with them."

Danny barked a laugh. "I'm hardly on speaking terms. Still, maybe I could try something. Until I officially apply for the Protectorate, I've got some leeway you guys don't have."

"Careful with that leeway," Dauntless said, a bit sternly. "That leeway is the middle ground in between being an official hero and being an official villain, and it can be narrower than you think. Once you start taking unsanctioned action, your next step is unsanctionable actions. Stuff that runs against policy tends to be stuff that is against the law. It's hard to pull back once you've gone too far."

Visions of Shadow Stalker flashed through Danny's eye, but he kept his voice as level as he could when he answered. "Yeah, I get that. I'll be careful."

"Besides," Miss Militia added, "the city's going to be a bit more dangerous for a while anyway. Empire Eighty-Eight just rejoined, Purity and Night and Fog just announced to their gang that they're back on Kaiser's side. Those are some very serious heavy hitters and you should stay out of their way." She turned and walked away with Dauntless, and Danny was left on his own to come to grips with the fact that he had driven the Empire back together, jump-started their allegiance and helped Kaiser recapture some very big talents.

"Shit," he muttered, and walked away.

He got back in the tunnels and rode on, his mind working the whole situation through. He wanted to tell Miss Militia that it was his fault that Purity was back with Kaiser, but would unburdening his sins on her help them at all? It wouldn't make him feel better, it wouldn't help the Protectorate trust him. Though, if they found out later and he didn't tell them, they would trust him even less than if he volunteered the information. But could he even really be certain that it was his fault? Well, yeah, Kaiser had said almost exactly that. Though it had not been clear that the woman being schemed back into Kaiser's arms was actually Purity, he would not have agreed if he had known it was someone like that. His brain was boiling with questions, second-guessing, alternative theories. He cut off a line of circular recriminations and looked for solutions. He couldn't very well affect the situation directly. Kaiser would see it as a direct threat. And Danny had foolishly promised Crusader that he wouldn't go after the woman or her kids. So, there was no point to telling the Protectorate about his role in it, they would just want to know how to get to Purity to bring her in and he couldn't tell them that. Just like he had promised Tattletale he wouldn't snoop around the Undersiders. He needed to stop making that sort of promise, it became very limiting very quickly. He was handicapped on two sides because he was hasty making promises.

But maybe he could offset the troubles he had caused. If he could disband the Undersiders, it could well cancel out the harm of having Purity rejoin the Empire. If he could convince Bitch to leave, their chemistry would fall apart and they would lose most of their effectiveness. Better even if he could get Bitch to make the others leave their patron, and go back to small-time crimes. The best of all would be if he could convince them to go straight and join the Wards. But he was hardly holding his breath for that option.

He could attend to that soon, he had something else to do first. He applied the brakes gently, and brought the buggy to a stop under the Mayor's mansion. He peeked in, and saw the place in an uproar. His wife was on the phone haranguing someone, his college-aged son was home leaning on the counter next to his mother and trying to calm her down. The young daughter would be in school right now. This was about what he had expected to find in the man's home, on the day that the central bank of the city, a foundation of the city, was robbed. He was very glad that he had been negotiating with a different bank than this for the Dockworkers deal. He would have been livid if the deal had fallen through after the papers were signed because the Undersiders robbed the place. Contracts like that tended to have "act of god" clauses that could shut the whole project down on occasions like this.

The juvenile mice he had planted here, his own generation, reported back nothing unusual. The wife had been on the phone for a long time, shouting at the bank president who was not telling her anything she wanted to hear. From what Danny was able to pull together, the Undersiders had gotten into the safe-deposit boxes, and Mrs. Christner was very very worried about what they might have found. The son had come home an hour before, in a great hurry, at her insistence, and was trying to calm her down to no avail ever since then.

Only three or four miles away, he paused again and checked in on the mayor's parents. They were both apparently blissfully unaware of current events, and were playing some sort of virtual bowling game. It looked fun. Danny moved on. When he got to the mayor's sister's house, he was shocked to find it even more disarrayed than the mayor's own home. The sister was crying uproariously, and her husband looked like he wanted to join in but he bravely held on and held her to him, stroking her back as she worked it out of her system. Danny checked in with the generation, and the smarter rats opened their memories to him, showing him men in black with guns that kicked in the door and grabbed the daughter, wrestling her out the door to a van waiting outside. The rats did not remember the license plate number, but Danny knew that would have been asking far too much.

He moved the rats back to observation mode, and he pulled out Tattletale's phone. One call to Kaiser first.

"Kaiser, this is the Wharf Rat."

"Our business should be concluded. The tinker will deliver your payment when it is ready."

"Ah, yeah, this is different. Listen, Mayor Christner's niece was just kidnapped by stormtroopers. I need to make sure it has nothing to do with you or your people before I move forward investigating this. I don't want to break my word or step on the wrong toes."

"No, it has no bearing on my business. But I appreciate your foresight and candor."

"Likewise. Sorry for interrupting your day," Wharf Rat said, hanging up the phone. Then he called over to Tattletale herself. "Hey, Tattle, it's the Rat."

"Hey, Ratman, how's it going?" There was loud music in the background, something triumphant. More like teen runaways on a good day than the stuff of nightmares.

"It's about that promise I made you, I wanna make sure I'm not breaking my word to you if I start checking out a kidnapping here in midtown. I'm pretty sure it's not related, since you guys were robbing a bank, but I'd hate to track this thing for a week and find out it was you guys all along."

"No worries, Ratman, we don't do kidnaps. You just solve that case and stay off the robbery, okay?"

"Not a problem," he said. "Congratulations on your score, and take it easy."

This was not the day to talk to Bitch about leaving the team, that was for certain. He disassembled the phone and tucked it into the buggy's cargo hold, then climbed out and found a ladder up. In this neighborhood there were no alleyways, he came up in the middle of the street and replaced the lid. He dusted himself off and walked up to the front door, ringing the doorbell. He stood back from the door, folded his hands in front of him to look nonthreatening and helpful. He made sure that no rats were visible in the area, on him or in the yard or anywhere nearby. It took a minute for Mr. Alcott to come to the door. The latch was still broken, the wood splintered around the lintels, and the man flinched as he pulled open his broken door.

"Mr. Alcott, I'm the Wharf Rat. Local hero, unaffiliated," Danny said, keeping his voice slow and soothing. "I want you to know that I'm on the case, looking for your daughter, and I'll be checking in to let you know what I've found. I don't want to make any promises, but I've got a good track record."

"Y-you're.. you're that guy from the Bust," Mr. Alcott gulped as if trying not to cry. He shot a glance over his shoulder. "Do you think you can find Dinah?"

Danny did not shift his posture, but he wanted to shrug. "I don't want to promise anything, but I want to tell you that I'm unusually well-equipped for this sort of situation. So, I want you to have more hope than you did before we spoke. Do you mind if I ask a couple questions?"

"Oh god, the police haven't even been here yet," Mr. Alcott said. "They wanted us to file a police report on their website, electronically. Apparently all their people are busy downtown."

"Bank robbery, it was a bad one," Danny nodded to commiserate. "Do you or your wife have any enemies?"

"Us? Enemies? Uh, there's a jerk at work, and she's got a feud with another member of the library committee, but that's all," Mr. Alcott said.

"What about Dinah, does she have any enemies?" Danny asked.

"Of course not, no," the man said, and Danny was surprised to find that was a lie. The rat in his jacket pocket could tell immediately.

"Sir?" Danny said politely. "If I know who Dinah's enemies are, I can rule out bad paths and find her faster. I've already ruled out over half the gangs and villains in the city, but you can help me if you tell me what you know."

The man paused, looked back at his wife, and lowered his voice. "She recently developed powers. She's a precog, a very good one. Good enough that I'm really surprised someone was able to grab her. She could be very valuable to the right people." He shuddered as he said it.

"Thank you Mr. Alcott," the Wharf Rat said. "I will call you when I have a lead, or news of any kind. Just wait here for the police to arrive and they'll take your statement in more detail." He turned and walked away, and Alcott watched him all the way to the manhole cover. He levered up the edge of the lid, lifted it a few inches, and the rats came pouring out. They swarmed over to where the van had been parked, sniffing and investigating for clues, and Alcott closed the door. Danny let himself down and replaced the lid while the rats started following the trail of the tires and exhaust, and other rats sniffed further up to memorize the scent of the girl and the stormtroopers who had grabbed her.

Meanwhile in the city, Coil was hanging up his phone. First Kaiser and then Tattletale had called to tell him that the Wharf Rat was investigating this case. Tattletale knew his plans, Kaiser had simply assumed Coil was behind it as he was the only local player who used paramilitary forces. Coil had given his power a workout already today, first orchestrating the bank robbery to make sure it was the biggest distraction possible, tying up the PRT for half a day and the local cops too. And immediately after that, navigating his troops to capture a particularly slippery precog who could see his moves in advance. Her power was to see all the probably outcomes, his power was to defy those very odds that she calculated. But he had forged and discarded dozens of alternate outcomes already this day, and now he found out that he had managed to leave a possibility for a local hero to expose his plans and steal his prize away. He needed to be stopped, and drastic measures were called for.

The Wharf Rat tracked faster than nearly any other, because he could mobilize his rats along both paths of a branching street or every turn of an intersection. He could approach an intersection and have three rats run to the street and smell for the particular truck he was looking for. Whichever the right answer was, he turned that direction and scouted out ahead. Every minute the trail was growing colder, picking out one truck on the streets was growing more difficult and becoming impossible. In the end he was really just trying to get a general direction so he could search more closely. If he could get a general area of the city, he could send his rats to sniff around for any trace of the girl or the men.

And he was doing particularly well here, in fact. The driver of the van had been doing everything right to deflect a tail, he had doubled back and circle around, he had pulled into parking lots for a few minutes to observe traffic and see if he was being followed. And that was the proper and professional way for black-bag operatives to drive their route from the job to the rendezvous, it was cautious and clever. But against a tracker that could identify a van by the degree of wear on the tires or the metal content of the exhaust pipe and the chemical signature of the last three fill-ups of gasoline, or the type of road grit wedged into the tread of the tires, it was really counterproductive. Especially against thousands of those trackers all networked together. Every backtrack let him catch up some more, every circle around let him cut the route short. Time they spent parked to make sure they weren't being observed was time their trail was getting warmer, not colder. And all of that was why he could tell that the trail they cut all the way down to the shantytowns at the south side of the city were just to lose a tail and secure their path before they circled back up to the northwest and headed for the west end of downtown, where he lost them eventually. Too many construction vehicles on the road, tracking chalk and gravel all over the road, covering the scent. But he had a district, he had a lead.

Now, he needed to get home to meet Taylor. He had lots of promises to keep.

When she opened the door, he was showered and in casual clothing, jeans and a button-up shirt. "Hey, Taylor," he said cheerfully. "I'm making burgers, are you going to want mushrooms on top of yours?"

"Yes please," she said, setting down her bag. "How was your day?"

"Hectic," he answered with a chuckled, shutting and locking the door. He turned back to the kitchen, to tend the burgers before they burned. He called out over his shoulder as she followed him, "but my issues can wait. Tell me about your day, first."

"Emma and Madison came back from their suspensions today," Taylor said. She sat down at the kitchen table and hooked an elbow over the chair back. "Madison looked like she spent the whole three days sunbathing. Emma acted like she spent the whole time thinking of new ways to humiliate me. She's trying to get me labeled as 'the crazy girl' and just make that my nickname and how people know me. She started leaving tampons and pads on top of my stuff, then getting rid of it and accusing me of seeing things. Lying about stuff and claiming I don't remember or that I'm hysterical. Gaslighting, basically. It's pretty insidious."

"And scummy," her father added. "Seriously, using the psychological trauma she deliberately inflicted on you as a way to discredit you, and use that to further punish you all over again? How do some people not realize that they're the bad guys? How does she justify this in her mind as being anything less than evil?"

"Relevant to issues that are close to you and your position," she pointed out. "Your current situation is pretty well fraught with moral quandaries that could have someone scratch their head and ask how you act with such moral certitude."

"Not really," Danny said easily, slicing some cheddar cheese while the meat sizzled. "I mean, I would like to bust the Undersiders for what they did at the bank today, but I did promise not to go after them. I made that promise so they would tell me how to protect the citizens of the Docks from the Merchants. I wound up reuniting Purity and her followers with Kaiser, but without Crusader they're not as strong as they would have been. And without me Kaiser might have found a way to bring her back and they would have been even stronger. I'm getting killers and poison-peddlers off the streets, and that is nothing but a net positive." He stirred the mushrooms around with the bacon, the mushrooms sweating out their moisture and absorbing the bacon fat.

Taylor toyed with a seam of her shirt, absently rolling it in between her fingers. "But for someone who is not trying to justify your actions, it looks different. You gave four villains immunity to take down two. You gave other villains immunity to take down one. You're making decisions about which villains are okay to be on the streets, and that's pretty close to condoning what they do."

"If I can weed the numbers down, it's easier for the other heroes to finish what I start," Danny pointed out. "I'm not actually responsible for the actions of every cape in the city."

"You're a little responsible for everyone that you interact with," she countered. "If you change their path, butterfly-effect, you've got a degree of culpability for what they do."

"And who could ever say what that is or is not?" Danny shrugged. "It's a cool philosophical point, but it really doesn't affect us in any meaningful way until we finally find the thinker that can calculate butterfly effect outcomes. So, what was Sophia doing during all this?"

"Well, she wasn't stealing my phone, so that's something," Taylor said with a shrug. "I think she's biding her time."

"I hope she bides for a long time," Danny said. "Hey, get out some plates and toast us some buns, this just has a few more minutes."

They were watching television together, munching pickles on her burger and black olives on his, a topping that always made her make a face, with mashed potatoes on the side. The show went to commercial, and was cut off with a breaking bulletin from the station's news program. "This just in, minutes ago this station received an email that details the private identities of every member of the Empire Eighty-Eight, the infamous white-supremacist villain gang here in Brockton Bay. This email was received by dozens of sources both local and national from an anonymous source. It lists Max Anders, president of the Medhall company, as being the infamous gang leader Kaiser, and his estranged wife Kayden as being Purity, the supervillain. This breaking story is crucial not only for its nearly-unprecedented breach of the unwritten rules of the parahuman world, but also for the revelation that such a powerful and influential businessman is also a crime lord and a neo-Nazi. Please stay tuned to this station for updates."

Taylor snuck a sideways glance at him. "Do you need to check your phone for messages?" she asked.

"It can wait," he said stoically. "I made you a promise, and I intend to keep it."

"Okay," she said, turning back to the television. Things were tense and weird, she declared that she was going to bed early, and went to brush her teeth. This was surely to relieve him of his promise so he could go engage in Wharf Rat activity, but he tried not to think about that as he got dressed and headed for the buggy. He was deep in the Docks when he assembled the Tattletale phone and listened to his messages.

"Wharf Rat, this is Kaiser. As a courtesy I am calling to tell you that there is to be a meeting of the various leading villains and gang leaders of the city, tomorrow night. You may call for a location if you choose to." His voice was icy and left a lot unsaid in the tone. He went to the next message.

"Ratman, it's Tattle. I don't know why you did this, but you shouldn't have. There's only two people in this city that could have pulled this information together, and I know it wasn't me. More to the point, everyone knows you're the one bucking for a job as a hero. They're having a meeting tomorrow at Somer's Rock, and if you know what's good for you, you'll stay the hell away from it. Tradition holds these things as meeting grounds, but those are the same traditions that you screwed the hell out of with this stunt, and they may think it's worth it to tear you apart." Her voice was rushed to get the whole message into the alloted time, but she made it.

He sighed, and dialed a number.

"Armsmaster."

"Hey friend, it's Wharf Rat."

"Jesus, man, what were you thinking? This is suicide!"

"Why does everyone assume it was me?" Danny protested. "It wasn't me, and I'll take your lie detector to prove it. But tonight the villains are having a big meetup to-"

"Don't tell me about it," Colin cut him off. "I don't want to know anything about it, I can't know anything about it. If any of us go anywhere near it, the villains will come after our families. This is one of the big taboos of the cape community, and you don't screw with those. Neutral ground at a conclave, don't reveal the secret identity, and don't go after people's families. They're all on the same page."

"So if people think that I sent that list of names to the news stations, they'll decide it's appropriate to go after my family?" he asked.

"Yes, yes they would," Armsmaster said.

"Shit. So, hey, how about some protective custody? My daughter and I, until this thing blows over."

"Wharf Rat, if you sent that list, you'll need protective custody from my teammates. This is dead serious, man, this is up there with the Endbringer truce. If someone set you up, they did not pull any punches at all. Look, either stay undercover, out of costume, don't use your powers... or find some way to prove your innocence. I can't bring you in until you do. This situation is radioactive, anyone involved is untouchable."

Danny sighed long and loud. "Okay, I'll resolve this. I'll be back with you guys shortly, don't worry." He hung up, dialed the first number back. "Kaiser, it's Wharf Rat."

"Ah. The rat. The sniveling, scheming, sneaking rat. To what do I owe the sublime pleasure?"

"I just wanted you to know that I will be in attendance tomorrow night. Somer's Rock, tomorrow."

"Excellent. We meet at noon."

"High noon, the duelist's hour?"

"This won't be a duel. It's just an hour that everyone has agreed upon. Now then, I have something important to do," and the line disconnected.

Danny started disassembling the phone. "Well, damn," he said, shaking his head. "This just keeps looking worse and worse."

He mapped out his path back home, and rode home with his thoughts in a whirl.

* * *

 _Author's note: I'll likely be crossposting this to sufficient velocity and spacebattles once it's compete, but until the last chapter is in it's only here. And thanks to the reviewer Lex Lurker who pointed out to me that FF was cutting out my formatting so my section breaks got lost, I've fixed it now. If anyone spots any more issues please let me know so I can fix them._


	7. Chapter 7

Apparently it was tradition to arrive to these things early. Tables were already pushed together in the middle of the bar, with Kaiser holding the head of the table, flanked by Fenja and Menja. He was dressed head-to-toe in armor that was made of blades fused together, grown one out of the other, with a crown of swords atop the helmet. The two women at his back were a matched pair of twins, statuesque and blonde, living propaganda for the Aryan race ideal, dressed in Valkyrie armor with one carrying a sword and shield and the other a spear. Seated at Kaiser's right hand was a skinny, hard-edged man with a greasy blonde ponytail and no shirt or shoes, Hookwolf. On the other side, with a space to indicate that he was not allied or aligned, Coil sat casually. His costume was a skintight black suit, seamless and undifferentiated except for a white stylized snake that wrapped around from his head down to his ankle, winding about his body. Next to him at the table was Grue of the Undersiders, a figure of pitch-black with a smoky darkness that swirled all around him, highlighting a stylized skull face where the villain's face should have been. Tattletale stood behind him, leaning on his shoulder casually, her arm disappeared except for the shoulder and hand. Bitch and a foppish young man that had to be Regent sat in a booth behind them. Opposite Grue sat a teenager with a tall top hat and skull-like red mask that mimicked a Baron Samedi look, Danny recognized him from his picture as Trickster, the leader of the Travelers. The rest of his crew was arrayed in behind him, a gang of teenagers in red costumes with a variety of logos and accessories. Beside him was Faultline, leader of a mercenary villain crew in the city. She was a battle-hardened woman whose costume was part dress, part military uniform, and part samurai armor. Arrayed behind her was a wedge of her people. An amphibious-guy with a tail and slick brightly-colored skin, a dour-looking giant with translucent skin and shell-like encrustations, a young woman with a brush-cut of bright red hair, and a cloaked young girl whose eyes fixated on the floor. And the only seat left was at the foot of the table.

Danny walked in, and paused at this display. Eyes widened around the room, various people that couldn't believe he had actually arrived. He saw Tattletale mouthing the word "idiot". People turned in their seats, changing their focus from the center of the table to the foot of the table. Wharf Rat walked to the chair and took a seat, swirling his coat around so it didn't drag on the ground as he sat. The door closed, and the dour-faced waitress locked it and turned around the sign in the window. The whole room was staring at him, a gallery of accusers. "I understand that most of you think I'm behind this latest upheaval," the Wharf Rat said. "But I would like to start by assuring you that I am not."

"And do you have any proof that you had nothing to do with this?" Faultline asked. Her eyes were hard and unflinching.

"I have exactly as much proof as you do," he answered easily.

Tattletale tut-tutted. "Ratman, you and I are the only people in this room that could pull this off. And you're the one currying favor with the PRT."

"I gave Crusader my word specifically that I wouldn't go after Kayden Anders or her children," Danny answered. "If I had done this, her name would have been left off the list. I didn't even know she was Purity until Kaiser pointed me at her. If I had been behind this, Kayden's name would not be on that list, even if all the others were. She was estranged from Kaiser, and had been dormant or semi-retired for longer than I've had powers. It wouldn't have surprised anyone if she was left out, nobody would have thought twice about it. It could easily have gone either way, and yet it went this way. I didn't make that list or send it."

Coil shook his head. "And you are innocent because you made one promise for one woman? That's hardly convincing."

"He's right though," Tattletale said. "He's telling the truth." She seemed more surprised by that than anyone.

Trickster scowled. "I'm going to need more than her word or his word," he said, leaning forward and tapping a cigarette out of his pack. "We're going to need assurances, collateral."

"You need more than the assurances of the two best-informed people in this room," Wharf Rat drawled. "Whose assurances do you need, Trickster? Whose word would be good enough? Or is this just a ploy to demand that I give you leverage just to bribe you to stop making vague threats?"

"Not vague," Trickster said, drawing a knife from his jacket and sweeping it towards Faultline at the same moment as he switched Faultline's and Wharf Rat's places, teleporting them into each other's chairs. Danny had a knife to his throat, and Trickster glaring holes through his mask.

Wharf Rat started at him in silence, not budging. The room went silent, and the silence stretched out. The tension built, and then leveled, and then soured, until Trickster looked like an idiot for holding a knife against a man who was clearly not frightened of him. Trickster snarled and pulled the knife back, switching Faultline and Wharf Rat back to their original positions.

"If we're quite done?" Faultline asked, her eyebrow arched. "My main interest here is to find out exactly who it is that broke the rules and released those names. I'm here specifically because I don't assume it was the Rat, and I don't want to take a chance on blaming him only to let the real culprit run free."

Grue shook his head. "I don't know, I think I support Trickster's call for collateral."

Danny leaned forward, dropping his elbows onto the table. "And while all of you are quibbling, you have failed to ask yourselves the important question right now."

Tattletale smirked. "Why isn't Kaiser saying anything?"

Every eye turned towards the leader of the Empire. The armored man smirked slowly. "Well, there's a complication," Kaiser said. "See, none of you are asking what motive the rat could have for outing the Empire's names. But yesterday, hours before the announcement, the rat called me to ask permission to investigate a kidnapping that happened simultaneously to the bank robbery in downtown."

"I called Tattletale too," Danny said. "I went out of my way to not step on toes."

Kaiser inclined his head. "So, we have to ask whose toes did he step on? Who was working to keep this vigilante from investigating that kidnapping?"

Faultline turned to face him directly. "You think he was set up."

"I think someone tried to play me against the rat," Kaiser said. "I think someone tried to manipulate me into doing their dirty work, and they burned my life down to do it," he said. His voice was calm and level, but metal squealed on metal as his hands shifted in place. "And I think that Tattletale has been two quick to insist that only she and the rat have the capacity to do this. I think we can't dismiss other suspects yet."

Coil shifted in his seat, and Trickster spoke up again. The Traveler took a drag on his cigarette and said, "Here's a thought. Let's kill the rat, like right now. If he didn't do this, he's already busted six villains and he'll go after more. He's a threat and we don't need to put up with him. He's a rogue, not a Protectorate, so this is our best chance. And then, after he's dead, we snoop around and see if he was guilty or innocent. If he's innocent, we got rid of one threat and we start looking for whoever did give up Kaiser's name. It's a question of whether we have two threats or just one, really. We kill him, and we either have one threat or zero."

"Did you kidnap the child?" Wharf Rat interrupted. "Do you need me to stop my investigation? Did you release the names to take me off the case?"

"Of course not, I..." Trickster saw in his peripheral vision the way that everyone was staring at him, and he turned to address them. "It wasn't me, and I'd think that was obvious."

"You're working hard to keep the rat from having a chance to prove himself innocent," Faultline pointed out. "We've heard from you. We know that you think he's guilty. We know you want assurances or hostages. But if we demand collateral and he's not the one, then we would all owe him the same collateral in return. Do you want that? Are you so sure that it's him that you'd give him leverage if you're wrong?"

Hookwolf narrowed his eyes as he glared down the table. "And if Trickster is that sure, I'd want to know why. I want to know what makes him so sure it was the rat. And why nobody's even looking at Tattletale, this is exactly the sort of thing she does."

"Because Tattle would have signed her name to it," Grue said immediately. "An anonymous tip would mean that she can't show off how smart she is, and Tattle needs that sort of thing like she needs air."

The various villains looked at each other across the table, and there was an acclaim of nods. "Okay, that's a good enough point," Kaiser said. "But she could have assembled the information and someone else could have gotten it and distributed it. But, one more wrinkle complicates this. Wharf Rat, be so good as to describe the attackers that kidnapped the child."

"Black balaclavas, long-barreled guns, heavy boots, fast entry, lots of shouting, about six of them plus the driver. The swept the house for threats and grabbed the girl, then drove away in an unmarked van that performed extensive evasive maneuvers thereafter," Danny spoke. Faultline turned to stare at Coil. Kaiser turned to stare at Coil. Grue seemed to turn with them, it was hard to tell. Lastly, Trickster turned to face the man in black with the snake motif.

The thin man spread his hands. "I did capture the girl. She is important to me. But I didn't release the names of the Empire. It is convenient to me that this has distracted the Wharf Rat, but it was also convenient to me that the Undersiders distracted every cop in the city at the same time as I was making my move. Things often happen that are convenient for me, but that doesn't mean that I gave up Kaiser's people to the newspapers."

The room descended into a silent funk, as everyone processed this. Kaiser broke the silence. "So, it sounds like we have four suspects. Coil because of the convenience of this and his expansive but mysterious resources. Wharf Rat as the known quantity, a snoop and a wannabe hero. Tattletale because we need more than her ego to rule her out as a suspect. And the Travelers, simply because of how sketchy they've acted during this conference."

"Hey now!" Trickster blurted, rocking forward.

"Sounds about right to me," Faultline said, shrugging.

Wharf Rat nodded. "I still say I shouldn't be on that list, but I imagine everyone else on the list would say the same thing. And the fact is that none of us are a perfectly clean fit for this crime, but a lot of us do sort-of fit it."

"Looks good for you," Trickster sneered. "You were the shoo-in candidate before you walked in, and now you've got three other suspects."

"We've got more suspects because Kaiser revealed relevant information," Faultline reminded him. "And these defensive outbursts of yours are exactly why you're on the list."

"I don't suppose anyone has an alibi?" Wharf Rat tossed out, leaning back in his chair. "I was hanging out with my daughter, but clearly I can't verify that in front of all of you."

"I was counting a whole lot of money," Tattletale said, shrugging. "But I've only got my teammates for witnesses and nobody here would trust their word."

"I have no alibi either," Coil said.

"I was with my team," Trickster said. "And so it looks like none of us can take ourselves off the list."

Kaiser sighed. "This is not productive. I have contact information for all of you, I move that we reconvene soon, after we have more information. I trust that each of us will investigate to the best of our abilities. If any of you do get proof or evidence in the interim, I trust you will contact me immediately and let me know who ruined my life entirely. I will reward handsomely for the privilege of meting out punishment myself."

Coil raised a hand to interject a point. "I support this notion of all of us working to find the answer. Can I propose a moratorium on all outside activities, or any hostilities or territorial conflicts that might distract us from this endeavor?"

Kaiser snorted a half a laugh. "You mean that you want the rat to stop sniffing around your kidnapping, and you want this conclave to enforce your demands," Kaiser said. "If you weren't on the list yourself, I'd back your proposal. As it is, this is one suspect asking for preferential treatment over another suspect."

Trickster sighed and stood, and the rest of the Travelers stood up behind him. "We'll see what we can learn, but I reiterate that letting the rat leave her alive is a mistake."

Danny turned his head towards the boy fast enough that the fabric of his mask made a snapping noise. "You have taken absolutely every opportunity to provoke me during this conference," he said. "You started this meeting by threatening my life on neutral ground, which already makes you no better than the actual guilty party we're investigating. If anyone here should not wake away alive, it's you." He stood, and the room was suddenly full of rats. They burst out from under booths and tables, around the bar, every dark corner and empty drain and falling from the air vents and the windows. He stood, and the rats swirled up and around him like an inverted tornado, spiraling up his body from the floor. The rats perched on his shoulders, clung to his jacket, writhed down his right arm, and concealed his lower body entirely. The rats glared at Traveler, teeth bared. "You like a show of power, Trickster. Here it is. And I hope you appreciate it more than you appreciate the fact that I had two rats under your chair next to your Achilles tendons as soon as you teleported me. Had you made the wrong move, an inch, you would have lost your feet. I bet that even a teleporter wants to be able to walk."

Kaiser stood, his chair falling over behind him, and the rats whisked away as fast as they appeared, leaving only the couple dozen that clung to Wharf Rat's jacket and sleeve. The leader of Empire Eighty-Eight pointed a newly-minted sword across the table. "Rat, do not break the neutrality of this ground again. Trickster, mind your words and mind your ankles. We have clearly been in this room too long, any further and I'll have to watch you all squabble each other to death. Leave here, and find out what you can. I will call you again when there is something to share."

The two valkyries at his side moved from behind him to the front as he turned, guarding his back from the roomful of villains. Hookwolf slunk along after, glaring at everyone. Trickster and the Travelers left without a word or ceremony, sparing not a look for Wharf Rat. Faultline stood slowly, and her team fell in alongside her. She looked around the room, and sighed. "We should do this less often," she said, and walked to the door.

Coil stood and left, and only Wharf Rat and the Undersiders were left. He looked at them, they looked at him. "I really didn't do it," he repeated, shrugging.

"And you're still not lying," Tattletale said. "But, neither did I."

"And you're not lying either," Danny said with a nod. "Could you have?"

"With resources and assistance, yes," she said. "Could you?"

"With time," he said. "And a couple of lucky leads. Hey Grue, could you answer me a question?"

The swirling black silhouette looked up at the other man. "What question?"

"Are you getting what you want?" Danny asked him. "I don't need to know what you really want, what makes you do what you're doing. I just want to know if you are getting whatever it is that you want."

"Some kind of mind game?" Grue asked, looking over his shoulder towards Tattletale.

"Something like that," she said. Her face was tucked down towards her leader but her eyes were glued to the Wharf Rat like he would disappear if she looked away.

Grue shrugged. "Right now, I am. Steady progress."

Danny watched him, but there was no body language to read and nothing to smell or hear from him. He nodded, slowly. "Okay, that's good. Lots of people put themselves on a path and never ask themselves if it's time to try a different path. Thank you for answering." He paused, and turned his head slightly to look at Bitch. She glared back at him, challenging, her lip peeling back from her teeth. He turned and walked away before another fight could erupt.

Down the storm drains, he climbed into the tunnel buggy and assembled the Tattletale phone, to find it had dozens of messages waiting for him. "Shit," he grunted, and sped off towards the Docks while a small mouse started the first message.

"Armsmaster here," the phone said.

"Armsmaster, it's Wharf Rat, Purity's gone nuts and has started leveling Docks," Danny blurted out.

There was a sigh. "Yeah. And we're under orders to stand down. Officially it's for our own safety; Purity has a posse with her: Night and Fog, Viktor and Othala, and Rune. There are four villains out there right now that can kill half my team in one shot, and even with my armor I can't take more than a few hits from Purity or Night, and none at all from Rune. Even if we got the Wards in, we're just giving Purity more victims. But Purity has limited stamina, she rarely stays in a fight more than a few hours, especially when she's using as much power as she's using now. Unofficially, I think the Director is looking at this more as urban renewal than a bloodthirsty rampage. And even more unofficially, I think it's a message to you that you crossed the line when you attacked Shadow Stalker."

"People are dying, man. You can't be on board with standing by."

"There's been a few injuries, but nothing indicates anyone's dying yet," Armsmaster countered. "Velocity, Battery and Assault are out there now, evacuating people from the path of the battle, keeping casualties down."

"We won't know about deaths until the buildings have been inspected," Danny retorted. "And besides, people are losing their homes and you're letting it happen so you can wait for Purity to wear herself out."

"Wharf, hear me when I say this: Purity can paste my team. Night and Fog can kill us horribly. Rune will drop a building on us and then there's no Protectorate. We _have_ to stand down."

Danny sighed. "Okay, I hear you. I just... I just want you to keep helping people evacuate, and keep the casualties down. I'll take on the Empire my way."

"By yourself? Wharf, you're even more vulnerable that the rest of my team. You're a fish in a barrel to these guys."

"I'm not saying I'll be alone. What can you tell me that would help?"

"She wants her child back. The PRT snatched the kid about an hour ago; wanted criminals with body counts are not fit mothers. She has demanded the return of the child, and she holds you responsible. She's trashing the Docks to draw you out."

"Then she'll be easy to bait," Wharf Rat replied. "Most problems in this world can be solved by finding out what people want, and giving it to them."

The rampage against the Docks was taking place on multiple fronts. In the air, Purity and Rune held sway. The advancing line on the ground was Night and Fog. Working the back line and hard targets was Viktor, with Othala's assistance.

Purity was floating, a glowing figure with her hair lifting up as if suspended in a breeze or blown by the sheer volume of light she was pouring out. She pointed her hands, and a spear of radiance lashed out that slashed through the brickwork of a tenement, severing the studs and supports and bringing down half the structure. She was a slim woman; every other feature about her was lost to the impenetrable glare that streamed out of her skin and skintight outfit. Meanwhile, Rune was riding a huge chunk of rubble that she manipulated telekinetically, with other slabs of masonry orbiting around her. She was a younger woman, barely more than a girl, and her costume was covered in Norse runes layered over each other. One of the chunks of concrete orbiting her dipped down to smash the other half of the building down, reducing it to rubble. She looked for intact pieces big enough to bother adding to her collection, and moved on.

A sickly-looking grey mist moved along the ground, and any residents fleeing the aerial villains avoided this mist. Not only because it was wildly toxic, but because of what was hidden inside it. Night and Fog had a great synergy, powers that complemented each other's almost perfectly. Anything that went into that mist was probably not coming back out. In their human forms, they were a pair of matching cloaked figures, grey and black, male and female. But now they were a sentient cloud of dangerous chemicals and a fast-moving horror that could never be seen.

Viktor and Othala were another pair that worked with synergy. He could absorb the skills from anyone in his vicinity. He had used this capacity to become expert in virtually every weapon and fighting style there was, everything from infiltration to bomb defusal to strategic planning, dozens of languages, obscure vehicles, and anything of that sort. He wore a red bodysuit with dozens of pouches for weapons. Othala wore a white suit and cloak, printed with the single rune "odal", from which she took her name. Her power was to give powers to others, anywhere from a few seconds to a couple minutes. With her help, Viktor was super-fast, or invulnerable, and with his skills he hardly needed that advantage.

Othala was the first to be attacked. She was walking down the street, keeping herself between the fog and Viktor, when rats shot out of the storm drain faster than she would have thought possible, striking so fast she thought they had pierced her like big sleek-furred bullets. But they had bitten her and then scattered, and the pain hit her fast. "Viktor!" she called out, and then her legs went out from under her. He flashed to her side with superspeed, and saw how three deep bites had cut into three different arteries, spurting a lot of blood that stained her white costume. He cursed, and drew a knife to cut her cloak into wide straps, wider than in the movies, and used his medical skills to apply the pressure dressings and staunch the bleeding as best he could. The bandages soaked through too quickly, even as he cut new lengths to strap on top, to increase the pressure. He checked his pouches, there were no sutures or needles. "Hey, O," he said, patting her cheek until she opened her eyes. "With some pyrokinesis, I can cauterize these wounds."

"We should go," she said, her breath coming fast. "I'm hit bad, and-" Another rat shot out of the shadows and grazed her, drawing another long wound across her arm, and she winced and bit her lip.

"Shit," he said, shaking his head. He picked her up and looked around for their leader. "Purity!" he yelled up into the air. He projected hard, casting his voice out as far as he could, and at the third shout the leader of their band turned back and noticed him. She waved to him, and he pointed at his bleeding wife. "She needs help! Surgery! I've gotta get her out of here!"

"Dammit," Purity snarled. "I'm gonna kill that rat man." She pitched her voice to carry. "Go! Take care of her!" Then she turned to the rest of her ground forces. "Night! Fog! Kill the rats! Get into the tunnels, the vents, all those hiding places. Kill his rats and look for him!"

The fog started to flatten itself, seeping down into storm drains and sewers, reaching deeper into alleys and dumpsters. And rats began streaming away, all of them fleeing away from the fog as if with one single mind. The fog was lethal but it moved only as fast as a man's walking pace, and the rats could run a good bit faster than that when they were motivated. He flowed after them, but only fell behind. The rats congregated in the road, a few feet between them, and ran all in one direction. Fog condensed himself back into a man, and his partner Night was forced back to her human form, and the two of them ran after the rats to bring them back into their lethal range. Purity flew overhead, tracking the center of the mass and then pulsing out two bolts of light that hit like a car crash, leaving craters in the road way and killing three or four rats with each attack. Rune floated after, looking for a good opportunity to help. And ten rats leaped from a nearby building onto the concrete slab she rode, scuttling closer. The girl screamed as the rats slashed her open. It took a second to hamstring her, blind her in one eye, and leave a dozen deep bleeding gashes on her body. Her concentration wobbled, and the stone nearly dropped her off the side to fall a hundred feet onto the ground.

Purity shrieked with rage and looked for something to shoot, but the rats were disappearing again. She gritted her teeth to master her frustration, closed her eyes. And with her eyes closed, all she could see was Aster, her infant girl. The PRT had stolen Aster out of her crib because the rat man had skulked around and spied on them until he could sell out the whole Empire at once. Yesterday he had captured her staunchest ally Crusader, and today he had told the PRT how to steal her baby. She opened her eyes, and looked at the bleeding Rune. "Follow Viktor and Othala, catch up with them. She can regenerate you," Purity said.

Rune nodded, and the flying island of concrete flew itself away, after the other two members of their strike force. In a minute, the rat man had whittled her cadre of powerhouses in half. She lashed out in every direction, smashing buildings on every side. Walls came down, roofs slumped downward, light poles and telephone poles were severed and fell in place, long trenches were carved in the streets. From the air, she could see a flurry of rodents on a low rooftop, and she zoomed in closer to blast at them and see if her enemy was close by. She was looking away from Night and Fog when the next development hit.

Two trucks, a dozen burly men and women, a dozen Mickey Mouse plastic party-store masks with elastic bands, and a dozen generic beige canvas coveralls, and a forty-foot cargo net with strands three inches thick. The trucks drove fast, close together. The drivers kept their hands steady and their eyes peeled, while the passengers were counting seconds aloud from synchronized watches. In the truck beds were four men or women in each, with two hold tightly to the rolled mass of netting, and the other two standing by to help if necessary. They drove straight towards the fog, and the drivers hit their horns at the same time, signaling everyone to take a deep breath and hold it. And then the drivers veered away from each other, sweeping to opposite sides of the street, each of them nearly outside of Fog's range. And the net was stretched tight between them, gripped tightly in eight hands while the dockworkers braced their feet against the inside of the truck bed for leverage. There was an impact on the net, something huge and heavy that nearly yanked free of their hands. And then they drove out the other side, with Night bundled in their net. The two trucks closed the gap again, and the net folded around her, wrapping tight.

"How often do you see white supremacists dragged behind pickup trucks?" Barry chortled. "Okay, D- Wharf Rat, we've got her, and we'll keep an eye on her. You take care of the others," he said to the small white mouse in the small cage on the dashboard. The mouse gave a nod and a salute. The twelve dockworkers kept a close eye on Night, blinking in shifts, before one of them managed to find the angle for a sleeper hold and knock her unconscious. And then the mouse-masked men and women drove their prisoner to where Battery and Assault were evacuating residents, handing off their prisoner to the heroes.

Fog condensed himself back to human form. "Purity! Hey!" he called out. "The rat has allies, they have taken Night!"

Purity flew up, frustrated anew at her fruitless search for the source of her harassment. "Dammit!" she hissed. "Stay here, try to find him, kill his rats, I'll get Night," she said. "Which way?" she followed his gesture down the street and around the corner, to where the Protectorate was taking custody of Night from a dozen masked figures with mockingly-cheerful mouse masks on. She took aim, but Assault whirled around as if he had somehow seen her from a block away, and held up Night as a living shield between himself and Purity. The others all stepped in behind him. She could not blast him without taking out her own ally first. She was very short of allies, and if she hurt Night then Fog might abandon her too. The thought made her chest tight.

And almost directly below her, a door opened, and a figure in a brown mask with a long tan trenchcoat burst out a door onto the street, and stopped, staring straight up at her. Purity whirled to aim at the rat man, who was already throwing himself back in the door of the building. She blasted hard, pouring her reserves into it. Her hardest blasts hammered at the structure, caving it in. She brought it down, smashing it flat, blast after blast of hard light lancing from her hands into the masonry, pulverizing it until the air was filled with choking dust. She paused, wobbling in the air, and wiped sweat from her forehead. And then, down the street, a door opened and the brown mask and trenchcoat peeked out into the open. "Dammit," Purity growled. "He got into the tunnels or something." She flew over, blasting away, chasing him back indoors. This building she flattened fast, throwing her most powerful blasts into it one after another to make sure everything inside was dead and gone. She kept blasting until not one brick was whole, and then she sagged. Her hair started to fall, fading to brown, as her glow dissipated. She was ten feet off the ground when it evaporated, and she dropped hard to the ground, twisting her ankle badly.

Assault came bounding up as he took the space in twenty-foot leaps, ricocheting off the walls to avoid obstacles. "Okay, Purity, you're under arrest," he said, crouching over her. Battery appeared on the other side, her suit still glowing from the accumulated charge of super-speed and strength she had built up. And then Velocity, wearing the Wharf Rat's spare mask and trench coat, came racing up. His superspeed came at a price, the faster he went the less he could affect the physical world, he lost strength and toughness proportional to his speed. But for dodging blasts and leading enemies on a wild-goose-chase to expend their energy, he was as good as they came.

And only then did the manhole cover lift away and the Wharf Rat rejoined the party. "Holy shit," he gasped, "I can't believe all that worked."

"Would have been nice if she'd been as close to empty as you said," Velocity said, handing over the trenchcoat. "She nearly got me a couple times. You would have had a hard time explaining what happened to the Protectorate if I got killed in your vendettas."

"And now you've got Purity and Night in custody," the rogue said. "And Fog will turn himself in just to be close to her, so that's three captures today." He clapped Assault on the shoulder, and headed over to the others, the twelve in masks. "Hey guys, thanks for your help, I'm sorry I had to ask you to drive through a super-battle."

"Honestly, I was happy to help," Barry said. "Once. Dude, next time you need my help, you better be asking me to do some accounts."

The other masked figures laughed, but many of them were nodding. Wharf Rat nodded with them. "Okay, from now on I'll find a way to do these things that doesn't bring any of you this close. But really, thank you all so much. These guys would have killed so many people, would have leveled so many homes. You guys, you know what a home is worth. You build a home for years, fill your family in under the roof. And to have someone just come along, knocking them down wholesale just to punish me... it needed to be stopped. You guys stepped up. I asked, and you helped, and I want to thank you all so much."

"Ah, shaddap," Kurt said, and leaned in to give his buddy a big bear hug. Danny's ribs creaked, and he had to hold his breath to keep from groaning and instead embraced the larger man back, slapping his back in masculine camaraderie.

The mouse-masked men and women got back in their trucks and drove away, while the three heroes loaded the three villains into the Protectorate vans. "Friends of yours?" Battery asked, arching an eyebrow. "I saw that hug."

"Actually, yeah, friends of mine," the Wharf Rat said. "I have friends, most people do."

"Yeah but, yours came out to help you with this," she said, gesturing down the street to the abundant wreckage and desolation. A tree was on fire down the block.

Danny scoffed aloud. "This? This is nothing. I've got friends that would help me _move_."

She stared for a second before she laughed. It was a nice sound.

Taylor had come in the door in a flying hug, grasping him tightly. She cried and he rocked her, and he set her down at the kitchen table while she told him what had happened. She sniffled and dabbed her eyes while she recited it off in curiously dispassionate tones.

She had been walking from history to world affairs when Sophia had body-slammed her down the stairs. Not a trip but a body-check and sent her hurtling down. Taylor showed off the bruise that covered half of her arm and shoulder. And then two other girls had tipped a garbage can full of used tampons and sanitary pads over onto her, and they stood there holding her down and screaming whenever she screamed, mocking her. Danny was seeing red by the end of the story, and he held her close against him.

"Taylor, there's something you should know about Sophia," he said, his voice tight. "Rats are even better than dogs are at identifying people by scent. I can recognize anyone even if they've changed clothes, or costumes. She's Shadow Stalker, of the Wards. There's a reason that the administration of your school hasn't done anything about her, it's because having a superhero in their school is a feather in their cap, makes them feel a bit more like Arcadia high school. And Emma and Madison get protected along with her. She's killed people before, and I caught her the other day with her crossbow loaded with lethal ammunition instead of the tranquilizers she is supposed to carry."

Taylor pulled back from him, her face wide open with shock. "Bu- wh- seriously?"

"Seriously. She's a cape, and that's why she's always seemed to be above the law and out of reach, she was being protected from on high," Danny said, sighing tiredly. "But don't worry, baby, I'm gonna take care of it. Now, let's order some pizza, sit on the couch, and veg out."

His daughter smiled a pale and exhausted smile. "That sounds good. I'll get the coupons, you pick your order."

They ordered pizza, they grabbed a soda and a beer from the fridge, and then they sat on the couch and turned on the television.

 _Today's top story, Empire Eighty-Eight is gutted! The notorious supervillain team, crime lords of Brockton Bay, were handed another big defeat today by the combined efforts of the Protectorate and the Wharf Rat, local rogue hero. Captured today were Purity, Night, and Fog, three of the deadliest members of the gang. This follows on the heels of yesterday's capture of Crusader, and last night's reveal of the identities of the Empire's members to the public. Sources now reveal that member Krieg has fled the country, and Othala was hospitalized in this morning's battle. Her husband, fellow Empire soldier Viktor, is likely to be out of commission until she recovers. For those keeping count, that is five supervillains removed from their roster, with two more out temporarily. Only four or five members remain, and they are underground and on the run. Surely this is a crippling blow. This footage from today shows the roundup and the villains being led into custody-_

Danny stared at the overhead angled shot of himself and the three Protectorate heroes securing Purity, Night and Fog in the back of the Parahuman Response Team van. "Bullshit," he blurted. "There is no way someone had a camera, those buildings were supposed to be abandoned."

"The footage looks too smooth to be hand cam," Taylor said. "Maybe a drone or a security camera?"

"Maybe."

"Hang on, who are those people in the Mickey Mouse masks?"

"Just some guys from work. They wanted to help."

"You know what? Today, I'm not going to say anything about that. I'll freak out tomorrow about the fact that your 'guys from work' are now doing henchman work."

"They're not henchmen."

"You've been cleaning out villains, securing territory, now you've got henchmen. You've refused to join the Protectorate. If you take out villains, you're either a hero or getting rid of competition, and you are not acting like a hero. Pretty soon they'll declare you to be a villain just because you do everything you can to look like a villain."

He snorted. "Whatever."

 _-surprising twist, Mickey Mouse masks like this one in my hand have been selling off the shelves around the city. It seems the new sign of solidarity is to wear the mouse. No word yet on the Protectorate's views on this development._

"Shit," Danny grunted. "I've got henchmen. I've got my own gang."

"Yup."

"Kaiser's gonna be pissed. We were on neutral ground at noon, and a half-hour later I'm arresting half of his people on camera. He is going to see this just like the ABB and the Merchants, he's gonna think I'm out to take down the whole Empire."

"Aren't you?"

"Remember what we said about power vacuums? Empire Eighty-Eight leaves a big one. I don't want to take over half of downtown just to keep Coil, the Undersiders and the Travelers from going to war over the remnants. Faultline doesn't count, they're mercenaries."

"The Undersiders and Travelers don't count either, they aren't really into territory," she reminded him. "They're both just old-fashioned supervillain teams. They do crimes. They fight heroes. They escape with loot. Of them, Coil's the only one that really wants to have and hold."

"Yeah," Danny said, slowly. The doorbell rang, he got up to go get the pizza. He tipped the driver, took the boxes, and brought them over to the couch with napkins. He opened his box with peppers and olives, she opened her box with mushrooms and stuffed crust, both with pepperoni and sausage. "You know," Danny mentioned as he waited for the pizza to stop billowing steam so he could take a slice. "Coil mentioned today that things tend to go his way. Conveniently, he said. I think the insinuation is that's his power, he can affect probabilities or something. And I've been taking out his competition. I've taken out two and a half factions in the city, leaving himself and three groups that won't challenge him." He froze up, holding his breath.

In the basement, mice scrambled along the pegboards that held the data sheets on the different villains of the city, secured with thumbtacks. And one mouse climbed up and pulled a thumbtack out, letting a sheet of paper drop. That sheet of paper held a giant question mark, and "Fagin" below it. It was hung above Grue, who was slightly above Tattletale, and above both Bitch and Regent. A mouse moved Coil's sheet up into that slot and posted the thumbtack in place. Now it showed Coil as being the mysterious patron that guided the Undersiders, the patron that Bitch resented.

"Oh shit," Danny said. "I think Coil is Fagin."

"Who's Fagin?"

"From Oliver Twist," he said absently. When she didn't seem to understand, he elaborated. "He's the old man that teaches the little boys how to pick pockets. He takes the majority of what they take and gives them just enough for treats. He's their taskmaster who never takes the risks himself," he said. "I think Coil is secretly running the Undersiders, giving him two votes at the conclave table while acting like these things are unrelated. That's how he pulled off the kidnapping with the Undersiders as a distraction. He makes his own luck."

"Does that mean that he gave up the Empire information?" Taylor asked.

"Probably? I'm not certain. Shit," he said, shaking his head. "You know what? This stuff can wait a little bit. I need to deal with Sophia Hess first. She's a psychopath and she's taking out her aggressions on you at school and random thugs on patrol. She needs to be stopped."

She craned her head around to face him. "Dad? Seriously? You're not going to let a gang war play out for a couple of days for the sake of settling my high school drama."

"It's hardly high school drama," he protested, leaning against her. "This is violence, assault. This is them systematically torturing you while nobody helps. And she's getting away with it because the moral authorities are turning a blind eye because she's one of their own." He paused. "Besides, the only reason I got any cooperation today was because I had already busted six villains on my own, and I'm pretty sure that those heroes got some disciplinary actions when they got home because they helped me out. They weren't supposed to do that, I had to talk them into it. A thousand arrests, six good villain captures behind me, the promise of three more, and with all of that balanced against a confrontation against Shadow Stalker they almost tried to arrest me instead of the Empire. If I can prove that she's not Protectorate material, I'll be in their good books in a major way, because then it's a thousand arrests, nine villain captures, and one psychotic Ward exiled, with no demerits at all."

"Sounds convincing," Taylor said, chewing. "Most things you talk yourself into sound convincing."

"Shut up," he said, nudging her with his shoulder and taking a bite of pizza.

Eleven o'clock on Tuesday night, Wharf Rat called the Alcott residence on his new burner phone. He had transferred the messages and incoming calls from Tattletale's number to this phone, so he could finally stop worrying about traces on it, and didn't need to disassemble and reassemble it.

"Mister Alcott, this is the Wharf Rat. We spoke yesterday," the hero said. "Uh huh. Uh huh. No. No. I want you to know that I've narrowed the search down. I've got a region of town she's being held in, and I've got a positive identification of the person who arranged the kidnapping. No, no history of violence that I'm aware of, but I don't know anything about the men he hires. I'm sorry, really sorry, but I can't lie to you sir. Yes. Uh huh. I'm running down more leads, and I'm making good progress. I know you miss your daughter terribly, sir, but I am doing what I have to do. Oh, this morning? Actually, no sir that was not a distraction from finding your daughter, in a weird way it was actually an important step towards finding her. Yes sir. No, can't reveal my methods, sorry. But I can tell you this: even right now, as I'm speaking to you, I'm sweeping over a hundred buildings simultaneously for traces of your daughter's scent. Noses like bloodhounds, sir, I was surprised myself at how much they can smell. Look, you go to bed. You kiss your wife. And I'll do my part, like I promised you."

He drove on, steering with his hands and pedaling with his feet, navigating with the weird combination of senses that was all his own. The small white mouse dialed another saved number, and it rang until he got the voice mail.

"Kaiser, it's the Wharf Rat again. I'm about seventy-five percent sure that our culprit is Coil. I think he's got some powers to manipulate probability or the future itself. And I think he's the one who has arranged for me to fight against your people this morning. I understand if you don't want to hear from me, if you're angry with me, but consider: all that's left in this city is Coil, the Empire, and three factions that have no interest in territory or controlling the city. So recent events turn out very, very well for Coil. I'll be in touch when I've got something more concrete, but I've got a lead and I know how to check it out."

He only had a couple seconds before the phone beeped and cut him off. He hung up and drove on, sweeping doorways and chokepoints, elevators and bottlenecks, anywhere that Dinah would have to have been taken through. He couldn't check every room of every building, but he could check the entrances and any place that a captive would have to be taken, to rule out one building after another. He swept the west side of downtown back and forth until he hit the trainyards. He rolled to a stop, breathing hard, and shook his head.

"She's not here," he murmured. "She had to be there somewhere. Something's wrong."

Danny went back to Somer's Rock early Wednesday. If he could trace Coil's movements, the man would take him to Dinah. But instead he found that Coil had left the bar and gotten into a van, then went straight to the nearest car wash. Danny cursed, and punched the tunnel-buggy's dashboard with his fist. No trail to follow, no scent to trace. He did another drive-by of the mayor's house, but found everything there to be much more business as usual. And no sign at all of unusual goings-on or anything that might reflect on the mayor's secrets.

His phone rang, and he picked it up. "Wharf Rat."

"Yes, Mister Rat, it is Kaiser. I received your message. While your evidence is hardly compelling, your suspicions are similar to my own. I could resent you for what you have done to my organization, but it is far too easy to imagine you the pawn of another. Someone sly and patient and calculating."

"I choose to be flattered by your belief in my innocence."

"Indeed. This casts a new light on events. Nothing to call another conclave for, not yet, but perhaps to extend our truce. There are those in my employ, with less foresight than myself, who want to even the score for yesterday's events. Hookwolf in particular is eager to prove he can succeed where Purity failed, and Rune is extremely out of sorts with you, she may seek to level the entirety of the Docks. Rather than taking them off the leash and letting them follow their urges, I will be sending them to engage the PRT. If they strike by surprise, they may do enormous damage and loss of life. If you were to phone in a warning, it would be an exhausting battle to quell their youthful spirits and take their minds off of their vendetta against you. Take this opportunity to endear yourself to your law-abiding allies again, and use this time to find the evidence you need. They have less than ten minutes before Rune and Hookwolf arrive."

"Understood," Wharf Rat said, and Kaiser hung up. He immediately dialed the PRT number. "Hello, this is the Wharf Rat. No, don't transfer me. Listen, I've gotten advance notice that Hookwolf and Rune of the Empire Eighty-Eight are going to be targeting your organization. Not the Protectorate, the PRT specifically. They're on their way right now, you need to have an armed response ready and go in loaded for bear or your people will get torn apart. Tell everyone, do it fast, do it now."

Another number to dial, Tattletale's. He punched in the numbers. "Hey, it's the Wharf Rat."

"I know," Tattletale sounded tired. "But no, I won't meet you."

"I didn't even ask."

"You were going to ask," she said. "And no, I won't do it. You've got one question to ask me, and you want me in person so you can smell a lie on me. It's not going to happen, you're going to get me and my friends killed."

"You already know what I suspect," he said.

"You don't suspect, you know," she said. "You just need proof. That's different. And I won't give it to you."

"He already knows that I know?"

"Yes he does. He told me, for god's sake. You're not going to get anything out of me, I won't meet you, and he's already onto you. Just run, Mister Rat, run away and don't get in his way."

Danny Hebert sighed. "I can't. I promised a man I'd bring back his daughter. And Faultline, Kaiser and the Travelers will kill me and my family if I can't bring them a culprit."

"You could just stop patrolling. Go back to work, stop using your powers. Nobody knows who you are yet, Mr. H." Tattletale still sounded tired, but also rather pleased with herself.

"I've got something to try first," he said, and hung up. He turned his wheels towards the PRT headquarters. Coil wasn't the only one who could use a distraction to get what he needed. Whatever he needed to discredit Shadow Stalker and reveal her actions, he would likely find it there. The buggy cruised through the tunnels, almost noiselessly, weight distributed evenly across eight wheels, banking into turns and running up the walls to make the tight corners. And everywhere he went, the rats were directed towards the most plentiful food, the safest hiding places. For a few minutes they had human comprehension and perfect coordination, performing tasks that none of them could ever have done alone or at all. And where there was enough food and safety, he would prompt the females into early heat. He had to wonder how many juveniles were adapted to his power because of that, around the city.

Above him, he became aware of a battle raging. PRT soldiers trying to encase Hookwolf in containment foam without exposing themselves to his whirling gnash of blades and barbs, and others trying to reach Rune without presenting a target for her to crush under half a house or a train car. The force field surrounding the headquarters was still intact, but if she was allowed to concentrate her efforts there she was bound to overwhelm it, the soldiers were there to distract her enough that she could not destroy the building and everyone in it. One PRT trooper on a rooftop nailed Hookwolf with a tazer that looked like a shoulder-fired bazooka, long wires trailing back that unloaded a tinker-designed capacitor like a bolt of lightning. Hookwolf paused, not so much stunned as surprised, and then turned and bore down on the man, chasing him back into the covering fire of his comrades. Against a fight like this, there was nothing that the Wharf Rat could do, he would be worse than useless if he tried to get involved. So it was with a clear conscience that he cruised right past this fracas and moved underneath the PRT offices. The force field surrounding the building covered many approaches, but it was not a perfect seal, and that was enough for his rats to invade in force.

The building was in disarray, he could tell immediately. There was no business as usual, everyone was either flocking to the windows to see the battle to decide their fates, or they were on the phone shouting for backup and assistance. He had to wonder what that was about, there were seven members of the local Protectorate, seven Wards for the city, and New Wave had seven members as well, plus himself. With twenty-two heroes in the city, someone besides him should be on this scene. Agents inside the PRT building were unlocking gun safes and the armory, passing out riot gear and body armor. But they were not sitting in their offices. He moved to the top, sending his rats up atop the elevator cars to speed up the process while others moved through the walls and ceilings to spread through the building. And at the top floor, he moved straight to the south side of the building, the office with the best light and best view. As he expected, he ran straight to the Director's office, a jowly plump woman with a severe haircut and a sharp voice who was yelling into her phone. The rats were starting to pull back to look for another access point when they smelled it.

The personal scent of Director Piggot was the most common in this room, obviously, and there were three or four others that permeated as well. Two of them were generally mixed with cleaning products, the janitors. And another one was someone he had found just yesterday, and made him startle at the implications of this. "Why the hell is everything Coil lately?" he muttered to himself. The rats traced him, Coil's scent was found in high concentrations going down the hall to a specific office. An empty office that smelled of Coil more than anyone else, more than the janitors or anyone else. A ceiling tile was pulled out of place and rats streamed down to investigate the whole room, taking it all in. Assistant Director Thomas Calvert, the number-two man in Brockton Bay's Parahuman Response Team office, was also one of its most influential crime lords. He found a picture of the man, with his long head and boney frame even thinner than Danny Hebert's own.

Was he connected to Shadow Stalker? In his position he had to be at least tangentially connected to her. Had he released the Empire information? The answers weren't in his desk or cabinets. One mouse scooted the other mouse around to bring it out of power-safe mode, and it brought up a password prompt, and a warning that three incorrect attempts would lock the computer.

Three guesses on the password. His rats smelled around, and on the keyboard they noticed something odd. Certain keys smelled more like Coil's body oils than other keys. These would be the keys that he hit the most often with his skin oils intact, the keys that likely made up the password for this lock screen. From top left to bottom right, it wa N. He arranged the words like an anagram, ENPRST. Maybe a brother's name, Presten? He snorted as he realized what the obvious answer there was, and had the rat type SERPENT.

Wrong. The screen flashed red, and the timer ticked down to two attempts.

With a sigh, he typed SERPENTS instead.

Wrong again. One try left. If he got this wrong, he had tipped his hand and gotten nothing for it.

Other words that used the same letters as SERPENT or SERPENTS. Maybe he drew out the double letters? SSERPENTSS? SERPENTSSSSS? That seemed far too cartoony for him; it would hurt his pride to insult his own symbol like that. Maybe another word entirely, made of the same letters specifically to throw off tricks like his? Or more likely to be close enough to his logo for him to always remember, but not so obvious that it could be held against him. Coil liked schemes, matches of wits, he fancied himself a chessmaster. Could that reflect an interest in brainteasers and puzzles like anagrams? Possibly. At this point, probably. It would almost certainly need a double-letter in it, two E's, because a man that used this much whiteout and made this many drafts of a simple memo to post was too perfectionist to have an egregious misspelling in his password. It would be a proper word, an anagram of SERPENT.

PRESENT. That had to be it. He typed it, and almost hit enter. With these letters, with what he knew about the man, PRESENT was the third-most likely choice for a password entry. The password screen had three attempts allowed. One last trap? One attempt to use his own logic to shut him out? He added an S at the end. PRESENTS. He hit enter.

It worked, he was in. Rats pulled flash drives out of the man's desk drawer and plugged them in, started copying files wholesale. He hit an encrypted partition and skipped past that, it was way past his knowledge of computer technology. He was doing well if he could get what he wanted from Excel; encryption was magic as far as he was concerned. The rats grabbed their flash drives and climbed the walls, dove back into the ceiling tiles and made their way back to the elevator shaft. The last one out hit the button to engage sleep mode, and scampered up, helping the others push the ceiling tile back into place to hide their entry. And at the drain at the bottom, he was waiting, filling his pockets with all the evidence he could, and then stealthily rode away.

A block away an office building was evacuated and empty, and Danny moved the rats into the offices with their flash drives, and started reading everything he had pulled up. He loaded the information into dozens of computers and read each file separately and simultaneously. All he got from that was a detailed and comprehensive understand of PRT policies and operations, nothing incriminating. No or or anything like that. It was either encrypted, or more likely was not on his work computer. He closed the files as he finished them, and brought the flash drives back down to his position. Instead he started a search on Thomas Calvert, unearthing all publicly-available information. Fortunately, as a public servant that gave more information than most civilians.

Thomas Calvert, one of two survivors from the PRT's first assault on Nilbog. He went to prison for a few years following that, then rejoined as an analyst and began a track record of rapid promotion and managing his own retirement fund on the stock market. He had managed good returns, beating market averages by a moderate amount, very consistently. The good trades had begun to snowball, one good investment after another until he was quietly managing fairly large amounts of money. Then the retirement fund left the stock market and began financing expansion projects for local businesses. Finance and construction, security companies and headhunting agencies. He had quietly assumed ownership of a dozen companies that began making fairly large profits that were turned around into more ownership. He started insulating himself from those businesses, forming holding companies and trading companies that existed only on paper, doing-business-as documents that let him conceal his influence. It would take a detective years to unravel these secrets, but the Wharf Rat could work these angles simultaneously and maintain a view of the forest and the trees.

In an hour, he had a document listing off every property and address that Coil owned or had access to. It was an extensive list, but it was far better than "the west side of downtown." The list was printed and carried to him. He wanted to follow up on it, he wanted to see this through, but Taylor was almost home already. He rode fast and rode hard, and only barely made it home before her.

As soon as Taylor was asleep, Danny was out the door with his backpack, and headed for the buggy. He had stopped parking it near manhole covers and was instead using an access grate with an elevator. Rats operated the controls from below, and let him down. It would take him hours to search the different addresses that he had written down, but he was certain this time that one of them would lead him to Dinah Alcott. He first laid out the ones that were most directly on the route that the getaway driver had taken towards the west side of downtown.

It turned out that he didn't need to search for hours; the fourth address he checked gave him a scent of the stormtroopers and the girl. By the light from his cell phone, he used a stub of a pencil to circle that address with a shaky hand. Rats moved in slowly, carefully, utmost care not to be seen. His rats peeked in through an outfall that had been diverted and covered with a mesh. He could clearly see Coil's black-clad soldiers in the facility owned by Thomas Calvert. This should be damning enough evidence to mobilize the troops, and start someone investigating Calvert's movements more thoroughly than Danny could do. He had no idea if the man himself was on-site, but there was no point in finding out tonight. If he rushed them, disabled the guards, and Coil was not here, it would prove nothing. But if the authorities moved their own troops in, it would prove the connection whether they could catch him red-handed or not. The rats pulled back, silently, except for one juvenile of his generation that was left to keep an eye on the place.

Back in his buggy, Danny dialed the cell phone. "Mister Alcott, this is the Wharf Rat. I've found your daughter's scent again. I'm close now, and this is going to happen. But there are complications, and this has to be done the right way. Otherwise I'd be bringing her to you right now. Be patient and be calm, sir, everything will be fine."


	8. Chapter 8

Thursday morning, the Wharf Rat was calling the PRT while sitting in a park. He looked across the way to a handful of teenagers. They pulled Mickey Mouse masks out of their backpacks and raised them in a salute towards him, and he gave them a wave back. In the past few days, the Docks had gotten more back to normal. Somehow having him fight Purity on the streets reassured them after the depression from the Rock the Docks arrests.

"Hi, this is the Wharf Rat. Hey, is that Julia? We talked a few days ago, I recognize your voice. Okay, I was hoping you could put me through to Armsmaster this time. Thanks Julia, have a great day." He hummed along with the hold music for a minute."

"Armsmaster here," said the other man's voice.

"Hey buddy, it's the rat," Danny said. "So, are you the guy to call if I've found a supervillain lair and I want the Protectorate and the PRT to launch a joint assault and take it down?"

"I'm as good a point of contact as anyone for that," Colin said. "Why, what've you got?"

"I've got an address full of Coil's mercenaries, and an indication of at least one hostage on site, the mayor's niece who was kidnapped on Monday. I can virtually guarantee that Coil isn't on site at this time-" _because I just called his office and made sure he's sitting at his desk,_ "-but because of the nature of this situation I want to make sure that absolutely everything about this is entirely aboveboard and by the book as much as possible. But it has to be small and it has to be fast, with the absolute bare minimum number of people to know anything about this. If you need approval from the Director, call her and nobody else. Don't tell the motor pool, the dispatchers, nobody."

"And that's what you consider by the book and aboveboard?"

"I'm doing the best I can. If the wrong person gets word of this, it all goes bust and the kid dies. And if I explain it to you ahead of time, you won't be a credible witness after the fact and someone will claim that I influenced the decisions."

"You're being even more mysterious than usual, Wharf Rat."

"I know, and I apologize for that. Can you do it?"

"I'd be putting some of my own credibility on the line, and all of yours," Colin pointed out.

"Even if this goes badly, it will still likely be the most important operation you guys have launched this year," Wharf Rat pointed out. "And if it goes well, it'll be the mission that defines this next decade for your team."

The pause drew out. "That's a very, very bold claim, Wharf Rat."

"And I'm not prone to those. Trust me; I'm actually understating the stakes here. I ask again, can you do this?"

Colin sighed into the phone. "I can do it. And I will do it. I'll call the director and speak to nobody but her, and I'll have a team laid out. Is this a small insertion or should we bring the noise?"

"There's about twenty to thirty mercenaries in here. They seem like military professionals, maybe some special operations or SEALs mixed in. They've got body armor and some very exotic-looking assault rifles."

"If it's Coil's people, I know those rifles. They've got energy weapons built into them that let them compete with supers. What's the terrain?"

"Confined spaces."

"That's not good. Okay, disciplined troops in a confined space probably means they'll have response drills for incursion. That's a hard fight, and we need a big team. I'll see about roping in New Wave and the Wards if I can."

"Can you do that without revealing too much to anyone?"

"I've got favors to call in," Colin sighed. "Why do I do this for you?"

Danny chuckled. "Because a good track record is the best PR."

"You're gonna fail sooner or later, man, and then you won't be able to roll that line anymore."

* * *

Wharf Rat was sitting on the bench when they arrived. He recognized the craft that dropped off most of the heroes, he had seen the plans for it and he had given them to Armsmaster just days ago. It put his tunnel-buggy to shame, all gleaming polymers and space-age alloys. It flew in with unnerving speed and rocked to a gentle, unhurried stop, before it let out the gangplank and the heroes disembarked. Velocity first, then Manpower of the team New Wave. Manpower looked around. "Wow. This could be a first, I reach a scene before Photon. That's a really nice plane you guys have got." He wore no mask, and his name was public record. New Wave had been an experiment in unmasked capes, an attempt to insert accountability into heroism and drop the veil of secrecy. It had not caught on, but they soldiered on. Manpower was a classic hitter, he had an electromagnetic shield that gave him super-strength and durability. Behind them came Miss Militia of the Protectorate and Clockblocker of the Wards, then Assault and Battery, then Triumph and Shielder, Vista and Flashbang with Panacea before Armsmaster departed last.

"Holy cow," Wharf Rat said. "This is a really good turnout. Thanks so much."

"More on the way," Triumph said, looking back the way they'd come. A bright yellow-white streak in the air was heading their way and quickly resolving itself into Dauntless. Behind him came Laserdream, then Lady Photon with Glory Girl and Aegis.

"We're only a few short," Armsmaster said, "of having every hero in the city right here. This needs to go perfectly, Wharf Rat."

"I am very, very aware of that, Armsmaster," he said. "But this is our best shot, period, and you know I'm telling the truth."

"Full disclosure, it's getting hard to tell with you," Armsmaster said. "Something about you is starting to interfere with my voice-stress analyzer, but it's about 80% sure you're on board, and I'm about 90% sure."

"You wound me," Wharf Rat drawled, and some voice laughed at the banter. "Okay, we're directly above one of the Endbringer shelters. There's a hidden space underneath it, concealed by the foundations of the place. Entry access is through a monitored ramp from a nearby parking garage, or through a monitored tunnel that connects to the storm drains. It'll need to be a two-pronged attack or the enemy will slip away through the unguarded exit."

"Garage," Manpower said, raising his hand like a team captain. The groups split into two groups of nine, with the sewer group looking slightly disgruntled.

"Okay," Wharf Rat said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "Time is of the essence, and I'm the only one who can guide you guys in. I'm going with the tunnel group myself and I'll be on the phone with the garage group, guiding you in so we make a simultaneous breach. When we do breach, I recommend invulnerable heroes to the front."

"Changed my mind," Aegis said. "Clock, switch with me."

Clockblocker grumbled as he was ordered to the tunnel group and out of the garage group.

Wharf Rat led the way down the incline to where the runoff outflow emptied into the ocean, and led the way inside while he gave the other group directions to the proper address. Rats watched over both groups so he could keep track of them. In the tunnel, he took lead, weaving through the turns. The tunnels here had been modified specifically to be confusing and lead intruders into a trap, but he moved easily through it. Panacea showed up at his side while the others held back, murmuring to each other. The rats keeping an eye on the garage team noticed a smell they recognized, and he had a jolt as he recognized one of the Protectorate heroes from another setting altogether. But, he tucked that away for later and just spoke to the girl at his side.

"You're the one I'm most surprised by," Wharf Rat said. "I thought you hardly ever did field missions."

"I heard there might be a hostage, so I volunteered," she said. "Besides, I need a change of pace every so often. I spend so much time in clinics and hospitals, that sometimes even a sewer seems like a good idea."

"This is a storm sewer, not a sanitary sewer," he said. "Completely different systems, almost completely isolated from each other."

"Don't care. Still a sewer," she said. She wrinkled her nose. "And that is a sewer smell."

"It's rotten leaves," he said. He touched a hand to his earpiece. "Okay, garage group, you're ahead of us, just sit tight until we catch up on our side. Don't move from that spot." He looked back at the girl. "So, I understand you're a healer?"

"Biokinetic, strictly speaking," she said. "I can affect living tissue down to the cellular and genetic level, in nearly anyway I choose. Not my own, nothing dead, and I can't create new mass. Radical changes in chemistry take time, but I can reshape on the spot," she said easily enough. "Which mostly means that I wind up curing cancer over and over every day." That part came out almost bitter, almost resentful.

"Funny," Wharf Rat said. "I'd have thought that if you could do genetic engineering like that, you'd just make a germ that kills cancer and not people, and just let it do its work."

She was gaping at him when he pulled to a halt, mustering the others with him. "Okay, both teams are in place. With a fast entry we can disable most of the guards before they respond. The hostage is on the north side, right from my team left from the garage team. I'll be bringing rats in to support, watch them for changes to guide you through. Watch over each other, and this should be over in just a couple minutes. And then you'll get the big reveal. Okay, we go on three."

"Let's use my three," Armsmaster said, nodding to Clockblocker. The young Ward, in his white skintight full-body costume decorated with animated clocks, reached toward Wharf Rat and touched him on the arm.

And suddenly there was screaming, and gunfire, and everyone was gone, and the tunnel in front of him was open. He moved rats forward to see what was happening, and he saw Clockblocker on a catwalk with a hole burned in his side, Aegis was getting shot so much he was soon to be more lead than flesh. Dauntless was holding a giant force-field shell up around Laserdream and Panacea and Velocity, Shielder was holding a similar force field up over himself and Vista, who was missing four fingers off her right hand. Coil's soldiers had the high ground, alternating bursts of automatic rifle fire with pulses of purple energy. They were moving to evacuate the area, holding their weapons on the heroes. Armsmaster and Lady Photon were still in the thick, fighting against the soldiers, but they were not slowing the soldiers down much.

 _How long was I out?_ he thought. _What happened? Shit, Clockblocker, he stopped me in time while they moved on without me._ He swarmed his rats forward, and they closed in from the two entrances. Soldiers dropped in place, rodent teeth separated the leather of their combat boots and then the tendons in their heels, dropping them in place. Rats and mice stole ammunition from out of pouches, knocked weapons away, and interfered in every part of the enemy actions. A break in the weapons fire let Panacea rush to Aegis's side and heal him up from his wounds until he was back in fighting shape, and at the same time Dauntless lashed out with his spear and its coherent lightning slashed through the catwalk that the enemy soldiers were firing from, knocking their walkway off its rail and dropping it twenty feet to crash on the floor, soldiers spilling around it with broken bones or sprained knees.

Shielder dropped the force field for a second, and Vista ran for Panacea. Miss Militia fired off a rocket launcher that forced the enemy to dodge for cover, and let her teammates advance to better positions. And when the soldiers devoted all their attention to a counterattack, rats snuck up and hamstrung them in a second. The fight was over quickly.

"Holy shit, holy shit," Vista was panting, as her fingers were regrown from stumps right in front of her eyes. Wharf Rat did not look around, he just stalked down the walkways past the heroes with his shoulders tense, his hands curled into fists. He stopped at a particular door just as the rats had removed the barrel-and-pin hinges and he pulled it from its place, toppling the door to the ground.

"Dinah Alcott?" he said. "My name is the Wharf Rat. And you're safe now."

* * *

"We had to be sure," Armsmaster was explaining. "Look, it would have been the perfect trap. Get all the heroes in one place for a surprise attack, on your terms. You're on the villains conclave, man, you hold more territory than Coil does. You do favors for Kaiser, you infiltrate PRT headquarters, you nearly kill Shadow Stalker. And then after that, you come to us and say that you have a mystery mission that could not be more important, and we can't tell anyone or verify anything you tell us. And on top of all of that? My lie-detector isn't working on you anymore. For anyone else, it tells me if they're lying or not. For you it gives me percentages. What am I supposed to make of that?!"

Wharf Rat sighed, and crossed his arms. "I would have thought my track record spoke for itself. I'm on your side and I'm competent. I am good at judging risks and consequences. I research my moves before I blunder in. I've arrested more villains than anyone else in this city, and I've been on the job less than a month." He paused, and looked up. "How did you know that I was in the PRT?"

"Motion detectors in the storm drains," Armsmaster said. "I started installing them in key points as soon as I realized it was how you were getting around. You were an unknown factor, and you were either a shady sort of hero that could go bad at a moment's notice, or you were a very tricky villain who could play a long game to get rid of us all." He sighed, and slumped on the bench, his elbows on his knees and his hands dangling between his calves.

Clockblocker poked at the hole in his costume where he had been wounded and nearly killed. "So, what's the big deal with this mission? I mean, recovering a kidnapping victim is one of my favorite things, and taking in two-dozen of Coil's best men is a huge bonus, but this was played up as being the end-all-be-all and I'm not seeing it."

Wharf Rat bit back his first two responses, and tried to moderate his tone. "Well, now that you guys have seen fit to extend me all of your trust," he snapped, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a sheaf of papers. "Do you all pretty well agree that the place we just stormed was a Coil lair? Good. Here's the deed for the land we are standing on. It is registered to Presents Enterprises. The construction for the foundation of the shelter was by Two Paths Construction," He handed off pages to Clockblocker that laid out the paper trail as he narrated it. "Two Paths Construction is owned by Skinshed Holdings, Presents Enterprises is held by Skinshed Holdings. Skinshed Holdings also does business as No Buddies Business Associates, here you go. No Buddies Business is registered through East-North-East Registrations, and paid out of Central Bank Account 541667-9985. That bank account is registered to Thomas Calvert, the only employee on record of East-North-east Registrations. He's the president and CEO of the tangled mess of businesses that built that place we just stormed. The mercenaries were paid from the same Central Bank account number. This is a picture of Coil. This is a picture of Thomas Calvert. You will notice the extremely distinct body shape that they share. And also the complete lack of an alibi for Mr. Thomas Calvert. Your assistant director of the PRT is a supervillain, and you're holding the evidence."

Armsmaster took the pages from Clockblocker, and flipped through them. "You can prove all this?"

"I just fucking did prove it," Danny snapped again. "Look, go do your own investigations here, verify every step of what I've shown you."

"How did you work this out?" Lady Photon asked, leaning against the Protectorate's new jet.

Danny shrugged. "My rats smelled him. They smell the same. I can tell who someone is, whether they're in costume or not, whether I'm deliberately trying or not."

Miss Militia walked up to his side and patted his arm. "She wants to talk to you," the woman said, and Danny took the opportunity to walk away from this scene, turning his back on the heroes that had betrayed him right at the most crucial moment.

Dinah was sitting on a bench in the open air, with Aegis standing close by in case he was needed, and Panacea on the other side. The girl was clean and healthy-looking, already looking better than when he'd found her an hour ago. "How did you do it?" Dinah asked. "I only saw a forty-two-point-seven-three percent chance I'd get rescued in the first week, falling off each week after that. But I could never see the specifics, how you pulled it off. How?"

Danny sighed and sat down next to her. "I got lucky, mostly. There were lots of opportunities for things to go wrong. I was chasing an unlikely lead on an unrelated case when I found your house, and promised your dad I'd help. I got lucky that the bad guys driving away were trying to lose other kinds of followers, not like me. Coil nearly turned every villain in the city against me, framed me for selling out all of Empire Eighty-Eight, and I nearly died a few times because of that, but I was able to get a little help when I needed it most. One of the heroes in the city was doing some really bad stuff to people and I wanted to catch her at it, and that almost got me killed and it almost cost me the little help I did have, but it got me to investigate the right place at the right time to figure out who Coil was. Then I took all the little things I learned, put them all in one place, and figured out the rest."

"Most of that doesn't sound like luck," Dinah said. "Trust me, I know a bit about luck, and probabilities."

"What's your theory then?" he asked.

"Two things," she said. "First of all, you're a lot better than anyone realizes."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said primly, the conditioned response of a young girl. "And second, you've got something about you that is screwing up my thinker powers. There are powers that do that, mostly clairvoyants or precognitives that form so many paradoxes or closed-loop reactions that they effectively cancel each other out. My power is strong, it is mostly immune to that, but I think you've got something that's fudging my results, giving you a bit more than a forty-two percent chance." The polysyllables rolled easily off her tongue, a precocious girl immersed in deep subjects.

"Sort of like how something is fudging the results of Armsmaster's lie detector when I speak," Wharf Rat said.

"I can't calculate the odds that it's related," she said. "Sorry, too abstract." She was a very serious young girl, very earnest. He found himself warming to her.

"I called your parents, they're on their way," he said. "I'm glad we could help you. I'm glad I could help your parents. I'm glad we could get the guy that took you. And if you'll forgive me saying so, I'm glad that helping you also took down the guy that has caused so many problems for me."

"If it helps you any," Dinah said, "even if you didn't provoke him by looking for me, there was a ninety-three-point-three-two percent chance that Coil would have released the information and things would have played out mostly the same. You affected timing, not outcomes." She leaned back on her bench, and stared up at the sky. "I'm going to be doing a lot of work with the Protectorate, high probabilities. But, also high probabilities that I'll be working with you a lot, both in and out of the Protectorate. So when you need me, don't hesitate to give me a call, okay?"

"I'd rather give you the chance to have a normal life and a normal childhood," Wharf Rat told her, his hands folded over his knees.

"My parents would like that too," she said, a bit sadly. "They work so hard to have the normal life and the normal daughter. But the toothpaste doesn't go back in the tube. I'm a phone call away, okay?" She reached over and patted his hand, then hopped down off the bench and walked past Aegis, straight towards the spot that a car was just pulling up. Mr. and Mrs. Alcott rushed out to hug her, hold her, cry their tears of joy. The girl embraced them back, cried her own tears, but Danny felt like it rang a little hollow.

Aegis and Panacea hung awkwardly just out of earshot and he approached them both on the way to the rest of the heroes gathered at the VTOL craft. "I have a question for you both," he said, as he approached. "It's my signature question, just bear with me. Are you getting what you want?"

"What I want?" Aegis echoed.

"Whatever you want. The thing you want that makes you do what you do. Are you getting what you want? Are you finding what you look for?"

"Absolutely," Aegis said without hesitation. "I'm in the best place for me, and I have to think it's the best place for anyone like me. My life is awesome and everything is going better all the time."

Danny turned his head towards Panacea, who shrugged. "I'm getting as much of it as I can. There's no way I can have what I really want, but I'm at least close enough to appreciate it."

Her face was immensely sad as she said that, and Danny wanted to hug her. But superheroes don't hug each other, he was pretty sure. "If that's good enough for you, then you stand by that answer," he said. "But if you need a new path, pick it carefully. And never underestimate how much people are willing to help you." He clapped Aegis on the shoulder as he walked past, and got about four steps before he was interrupted by a ring from his phone.

"Hey rat man. It's Tattletale," the phone said as soon as he answered. "Coil just called me, wanted me to use my powers to find him a way out of trouble and out of the city. I told him to fuck himself upside down," she said that part with relish. "But now he's going to have the Travelers help him. He ran them from the time they came to Brockton, the same way he ran us from the beginning. They're not sneaky like Undersiders; they're heavy hitters, big guns, direct approach. People will get hurt. I thought you should know."

"Do you think I'm better off getting the heroes to help, or getting Kaiser to throw his hitters against the Travelers?" Wharf Rat asked. He figured that if a thinker was available, it couldn't hurt to get advice.

"If you can get both, get them," Tattletale said. "That's only common sense. Peace out, rat man," and she hung up.

Danny sighed as he stalked down the path towards the assembled forces of the Protectorate and New Wave. "Got a new situation. Coil's on the move, he's got the Travelers with him."

Armsmaster nodded and straightened. "We've flushed him out of hiding and now he's making a break for it. Given the chance, he'll change his identity and set up shop somewhere else. I'll understand if the rest of you don't want in on this, but the Protectorate has to stop him for the sake of our pride, he made fools of us."

Manpower looked over his family, surveying them for opinions, but it was Lady Photon that spoke. "We've already had a hard day. But we'd rather see this finished than back out now."

Her husband chuckled. "This time ride in the jet, don't fall behind just because you got stubborn."

She swatted him on the arm. "You guys have that thing packed like sardines as it is, you don't need us taking space too."

"No kidding," Velocity grumbled. "I'll run this one if that's fine with all of you." Shielder moved to stand with the other flyers, even though he was the slowest flyer in the group.

The ship was loaded and lifted off, heading back towards PRT headquarters where Calvert would have left from. Wharf Rat climbed down into the tunnels to find his buggy while the other heroes took off. His earpiece was tuned to a PRT dispatcher that tried to coordinate him with the others. She did an extraordinarily clumsy job of it, and he tried not to show his aggravation with her while he rode along. It turned out to not be too far, the VTOL had overshot the mark when it went to PRT HQ, and had to loop back around to catch up to the Travelers and Coil. Wharf Rat was only a few minutes behind the rest of the action.

The first thing he found was that Tattletale should have mentioned Circus and Trainwreck as well, those were two dangerous villains to overlook. Circus was a lean, athletic woman with a clown motif to her costume that changed every time she pulled a job. She never spoke, and her mask always smiled, but she was a dangerous assassin and burglar. She could manipulate existing fires, pull items into a dimensional space or put them back, and she had a superhuman agility and dexterity that made her an unpredictable opponent. Trainwreck was a power-armor tinker whose ever-changing suit was made of repurposed junk but seemed far stronger than one would expect. He had greasy hair and a greasy face, rounded cheeks and piggy eyes, and rarely spoke. They were both independent operators, acting as hired muscle between their own criminal acts. The Travelers on the other hand were a full-time team, led by Trickster with his Baron Samedi mask and his power to teleport people or objects by switching their position with another of roughly equal mass. Also on his team were Ballistic, a bigger brawny young man with armor-padded costume and the power to launch nearly anything he touched at the speed of a bullet. Sundancer was a pyrokinetic in the loosest sense of the word, she could create a miniature sun that floated about at her direction and could produce unbelievable heat. Genesis was a projector, she could fabricate bodies any way she wanted for whatever purpose she had, but they usually wound up being rather fanciful.

Today's offering was a giant four-legged beast like an organic tank, combining elements of a triceratops, an ankylosaurus, and a tortoise the size of a garbage truck. The shell over its back was transparent, and Coil sat inside, shouting orders to his minions as they fought back against the heroes. Circus was flinging knives with one hand while deflecting incoming blasts with swats from a giant mallet that had colorful ribbons tied to it that tinkled with jingle bells on every movement. Trainwreck was engaging Manpower and Armsmaster at the same time and doing a reasonable job of keeping a fighting retreat going. Coil's instructions to him seemed to help a lot, keeping the enemy from tagging him with a direct hit. Clockblocker tried to sneak around to disable him, but Trainwreck swatted a car at him and forced him back. Ballistic was yanking rearview mirrors off of cars and shooting them at the flying enemies to keep them back, while Sundancer swept her pet fusion reaction back and forth across the road, chasing back any of the heroes that wanted to get too close.

Genesis the living tank was making surprisingly good time, and she had a very real chance of getting them out of town fairly quickly, especially with her team helping out. Trickster swapped Manpower for Laserdream, forcing the heroes to rescue him from a long fall, then teleported Genesis a block ahead when he got line of sight on an eighteen-wheeler. He traded Circus for a bystander at a safe distance so she could get the chance to throw her knives at Aegis's unprotected back. Heroes were pushed into each other's line of fire, forcing them to be unusually cautious and hesitant, slowing them down instead of taking the offensive.

Wharf Rat was taking all this in, trying to figure out how to help, when Trickster traded himself for a bystander not far away. He was startled a second, then he recovered. "Hey, hey Trickster," he said. He kept his hands in his pockets, no sign of rats anywhere. "I said hey, Trickster," he repeated.

The Traveler leader turned to see who called him, and did a double-take. Wharf Rat stood close by, unthreatening. "What the fuck?"

"I've got a question for you, Trickster. Is this getting you what you want?"

"What I want," Trickster repeated, looking around. "Fuck. It's not. Not even close." He shook his head, and teleported away, leaving behind a chunk of rubble. He began trading out his teammates for others, and in a minute they were gone, Genesis dissipating and dropping Coil onto the ground unceremoniously. With the retreat of the Travelers, Trainwreck and Circus both took off. She vaulted gracefully up onto the rooftops, and he charged towards an alleyway. It looked like he wouldn't make it, but his suit shed its arms at the last second and made it narrow enough to pass through. Assault took off in pursuit, but the arms were radiating an incredible amount of heat where they lay, bursting rivets and sparking with electricity. The hero backed off of the hazards, and had to let the small-time villain go. And the hologram of the Wharf Rat flickered and faded out, the bomb disarming. A half-dozen rats picked up Bakuda's bait-bomb and carried it back to the storm drains, while Wharf Rat disengaged Leet's hologram override. Now he could be close to the fight, talking to people, safely. And anyone that thought to try to kill him would trigger an anti-personnel mine. He wasn t sure Trickster would have been okay if the bomb had gone off, he had to admit that he still had a lot of bad blood towards the leader of the Travelers.

Miss Militia held Coil at gunpoint while Armsmaster strapped zip-ties onto the man's wrists. And Wharf Rat slipped away, into shadows and tunnels, pausing only to leave a message on Armsmaster's landline back at his lab. "Hey Armsmaster, it's the rat. This message is for later. I just want to point out, digging out a high-level villain mole in your organization is a great opportunity to clean house, someone can take the blame for the fact that you've kept a sadistic bully on your payroll despite multiple violations of her probation. Just saying. Have a good one, Rat out."

* * *

He was still smiling broadly, enormously proud of himself, when the door opened and his daughter walked in. "So," Taylor said. "You got number ten today, didn't you? I heard about Coil. Ten villains down, thanks to you."

"I'm more proud of number eleven," Danny said, his eyes glinting. "Tell me about your day."

"I woke up, I had breakfast, I went to school, and my father was being all mysterious. What's up with number eleven?"

"No no, let's get some details, what happened with your day?" Danny said, almost smug as he patted the couch beside him for her to sit.

"Breakfast, school. Um, homeroom was kind of a bummer, had a substitute that patrolled around to make sure everyone was working on assigned homework at all times. Anyone that told him that they'd already done their homework, he'd just say that there was always more homework. Lunch was a pain in the ass, someone flung a spoonful of pudding onto my back and when I turned around Emma and Madison and Sophia and the rest of the girls at their table were all doing that 'innocent whistle' thing from the cartoons, so I had to go clean up in the bathroom. Sophia tried to pin me down in the bathrooms, but someone spotted us and I used that opportunity to get loose. I got to World Affairs, we had our last test on the segment on capes and I think I knocked it out of the park, it felt good. I've got a ton of math homework, but it's all rote busywork that won't challenge me much, an easy grade but time-consuming. And... oh. And Sophia was pulled out of class in seventh period by one of the assistant principals. Did you have something to do with that?"

"I asked the Protectorate to re-evaluate her probation in light of concrete evidence that she is violating the terms, and then I texted them a link to the video that Sophia took of them throwing you down the stairs and dumping tampons on you," he said. "Then I texted the same thing to the PTA and the principal. She shouldn't have taken that video. She shouldn't be watching it for laughs while she was on patrol. So I stole it off her when I saw her on patrol last night, and I did the right thing. Now the PTA is asking why this is going on in their school, while the Protectorate is asking how she let things get this bad. The principal has nobody on her side right now, and only one way to keep her job."

Taylor hugged him very, very tightly, and started weeping. He hugged his daughter and smiled through eyefuls of tears.

* * *

Friday morning, the Wharf Rat went for a walk.

He strolled through the Docks. He wore his jacket open as the day was warm, and he moved with a slow even stride. Rats came and went around him, not a great tide but enough to be noticeable. He waved to people and they waved back, some saluted him with the mouse mask. People slowed as they drove past and gave him a friendly honk. He smiled under his mask and enjoyed the day.

And then a motorcycle pulled up alongside him, all in urban camouflage. It was a bulky machine with lots of raw power evident, casually guided expertly by the lean athletic woman on top of it. Miss Militia wore a helmet printed with an American flag along with her camouflage costume. Her weapon was currently a bayonet in a sheath on her hip. She flipped up her visor as she put down the kickstand. "I heard that you were out on the streets," she said, still carrying some of the accent of her homeland. "And I thought there must be trouble. The Wharf Rat only shows up when things go straight to hell."

"Not today," he said. "So, is Shadow Stalker suspended?"

"She is being brought up on charges of violating her parole. She is going to be sent to a facility, not the Birdcage. It has the means to restrain her, and they will be counseling her for her rage issues and sadistic impulses."

He nodded. "I can retire happy now. Or I could join your team. Do you think they'd go for that?"

Miss Militia lifted off the helmet without losing the bandana that covered her mouth. "I don't think they have much of a choice at this point. I follow the trades, the media, the business rumors. At this point the feeling in the community is that if you don't join us, we'll have to join you."

He laughed at that, shaking his head. "It's not really all that. There's still, what, twenty-five villains in the city? Still plenty of work to do."

"Twenty-nine," she said. "You should keep up with the rumors more."

"I'd like to be one of your team, on the Protectorate, but I'd have some conditions."

Her eyes held his as she replied, "After having spoken to Armsmaster about you, I would expect nothing less."

"Funny. First of all, I want my daughter transferred to Arcadia high."

She blinked in surprise. "You have a daughter?"

"I do. And she was bullied so cruelly by Shadow Stalker that it put me through my trigger event," he said. "I will take care of her. And there are still bullies in her school that would torment her. Transferring her to Arcadia would help her."

"Nobody else on the team has children," Miss Militia said, her eyes shifting away and then back. "There aren't really accommodations for it. Every member of the team maintains residence in the tower, at least half the time. We sign out passes to go out in our civilian identities. Especially now that we're making the transition from patrol patterns to quick-response readiness. The residences, they're single-occupant, everything is built to stage up for action. We might put your daughter in a safe house nearby, but you would hardly ever see her. I don't know how we would accommodate you bringing a child with you..."

"Aren't their accommodations for kids there on site?" he said. "I thought the Wards stayed in the tower same as the rest of you."

"Sure," she said, "but those residences are only for Wards, and we... hang on," she said, raising a hand to her ear as she listened to someone on the other side of the earpiece. "Okay, yeah, okay." She straightened and turned back to him. "Okay, we can do this. I think Armsmaster is up to something, but he tells me we can certainly move your daughter into the tower and transfer her to Arcadia, no question."

"Second condition: If I join I'm a full member. Not a junior member, associate member, probationary member, none of that."

She didn't blink, just nodded. "Done. We don't have junior members officially, it's mostly a matter of informal respect and personal dynamics until someone has proven themself. Nobody is going to doubt for a second that you have proven yourself. And we're all still very, very sorry for how we did doubt you yesterday."

"Great. Third condition: We help the city. Like really help the city, not just chasing after rogue capes and villains. Clearing the Boat Graveyard, getting the ferry service started again, political corruption, helping people when we can."

She paused. "That is going to be harder than you think, Wharf Rat. There are a lot of jurisdiction issues there. We're handled through the PRT, which is technically a private peacekeeping force for North America, contracted and given broad powers to pursue and detain parahumans. But we're not actually law enforcement, when it comes to non-cape crime we basically just make citizen's arrests. We have as much power in other matters as local law enforcement and politics gives us, which is tied to public support and popular opinion. We normally have great latitude, like here in Brockton Bay, but we do not have the authority to dictate policy to local governance, and if we start acting against sitting politicians our support will get pulled in a hurry."

He sighed, and leaned back against the wall behind him. It still had marks from where the Merchants had tagged it. "That is.. unfortunate. You see, my interest has never been in fighting villains for the sake of fighting villains. I think it's counterproductive, and it was never more than a means to an end for me."

"And I am very surprised to hear that," she said, her eyes wide. "You have quite a knack for something you're not interested in."

He shrugged. "Be that as it may. I thought that Vista could use her powers to shrink the ships in the Boat Graveyard and then Manpower and Browbeat could lift them up out of the way and set them up for recycling or disposal. I thought that you could muster the funds to have the ferry put back in service. Help with local schools, things like that. Our society has a problem, people are trapped in patterns of poverty and they can only turn to crime to get themselves out of that pattern, because the law is what's keeping them poor. And so they are raised knowing that they must either suffer with denial and neglect, or they must become the enemy of the law. We have to change that, we have to give them a way out that isn't crime."

She considered. "The Protectorate does do a significant amount of charity work. We raise awareness for issues, publicity for good causes. Book drives, blood drives, clothing donations, things like that. Most people think we do it to raise our own image, by associating ourselves with good works. But it can work the other way, where good works can gain much by being associated with us. You can campaign for what you want, and have the blessing and authority of the Protectorate behind it, as well as your own personal following and the respect you've earned in this city."

The Wharf Rat paused, and considered this carefully. The offer was not entirely convincing. Her best offer there could be boiled down to _if you want to do these things on your own, we won't actively hinder you_. And it sounded like members of the Protectorate lost a lot of personal privacy and autonomy, their movements restricted and their living space arranged for the convenience of others. And transferring his daughter to Arcadia was a lot less of a priority than it had been before; without Sophia Hess and her protection as Shadow Stalker, the girls that bullied Taylor would be subject to normal discipline and consequences, and the harassment should stop. And, he would have to quit his job, he did a lot of good working for the Dockworker's association. Though, it didn't make a lot of money.

"What's the job pay?" he asked.

She told him, and he whistled with disbelief. That certainly did a lot to steer him back to that side of his mixed feelings.

She paused, glanced down at her gloves then back up. "Look, if it makes a difference, and if you don't mind my saying so, I hope you join. I know the Armsmaster does to. You've become an extremely influential figure. You currently poll as the number-one hero in Brockton Bay, above Dauntless and Armsmaster. You're a role model, Wharf Rat. And if you join us, it would reflect well on us. If you don't, then we could lose a generation. Any new parahumans in Brockton Bay would go rogue like you, and our ranks would dwindle to nothing. The Protectorate is not just superheroes fighting supervillains, it's also an issue of respect. It keeps people assured that we will be there to help them. It's a major force for recruiting for Endbringer resistance forces. A lot of our budget and fundraising goes to mitigating the damage from Endbringer attacks. Those things will be lost if people stop enlisting, if they decide that they're better off as rogues and vigilantes."

He paused, and considered. "If I join, and wind up leaving later, how would that affect your recruitment?"

"Honestly? Still better than nothing. We've already run the projections. The longer you're with us, the more the positive bump in ratings. The worst-case is that you never publicly give us the time of day and stay your own path."

"And I leave at my discretion?"

"Barring occasions of immediate emergency, yes," she said, and she seemed to smile under her bandana.

He sighed, and stepped forward to shake her hand. "I'll be by to sign in, in two weeks. I need some time to put the rest of my life in order before I join. Two weeks and three weekends."

She shook his hand. "Looking forward to it," she said. Definitely smiling.

* * *

"You know what's great about this mask?" Wharf Rat was saying as the doors shut. "Literally nobody can see if I'm smiling or not. It makes posing for pictures so much easier."

"We're going to have to talk about that, among many other things," Glenn Chambers said, bustling in to the elevator alongside the newly-minted hero.

Armsmaster nudged the garishly-dressed fat man. "He's been a Protector for about fifteen seconds. Give him a chance to sit down, at least."

"Good speech," Wharf Rat said to the armored tinker.

"It was the right time," Armsmaster said, shrugging. "And this way I'm still considered the unofficial leader of the team even if Dauntless does surpass me, and even if the Director likes his charisma better than mine." He nodded towards Emily Piggot, who acted as if she did not hear him at all.

Wharf Rat nodded. "It makes a world of difference to step down on your own terms, rather than to have the change pushed on you. I had my going-away party at work last Friday, so I've been thinking about this a bit."

The elevator doors whisked open and they stepped off onto the Hub, the muster point for the team. The elevator whisked back down to pick up more of the team and administrators, while Armsmaster took off his helmet. "Ah, that's better," he said. "No matter how I design the thing, there's a certain degree of comfort you just have to give up if it's going to be functional." He looked over at the new hero, and gave a nod. "Go ahead, nobody is allowed on this level unless they've got the clearance for your secret identity."

The Wharf Rat shrugged, and a dozen rats swarmed up out of his jacket and past the collar, streaming up across his head. Tiny teeth snipped threads, working in concert they were able to open the seams in short order. Danny took the chinpiece and pulled the fabric away, tucking it into his pocket.

"I knew he was sewed into that thing!" Assault crowed as they stepped off the elevator. "Pay up!"

Battery sighed and dug her wallet out while Velocity and Dauntless and Triumph removed their helmets, hoods and masks. Glenn Chambers stared, mortified, at the thin man. "First things first, we need to revamp your entire image. I don't mind the brown per se, but hiding rats in your jacket and sewing yourself into your mask has got to go. Is there any chance that you don't need rats at all? I've drawn up some preliminary sketches, and it turns out that rodents are pretty versatile. Hamsters, moles, squirrels-"

"Rats and mice," Danny said, shaking his head. "And only certain species of shrew. I've tried to get through to other forms of rodent, but my connection is pretty specific. No squirrels, no voles, nothing like that."

Glenn sighed. "Maybe a half-mask then. Something less creepy and bondage-y."

Danny looked around at the rest of the room, as Battery took off her eyemask and Miss Militia tugged down her bandana. "Holy crap, I'm the only person on this team old enough to remember a world before capes."

"We'll have to keep that to ourselves," Glenn said. "That bald spot is not going to play well to the audience."

Danny snorted. " _You're_ passing judgment on _my_ hair?"

Assault dropped onto a couch at the side, and nodded towards Battery. "I like him."

"Whatever," she said, rolling her eyes. "Unzip me." Her husband reached up to untab the hidden catch and started the zipper down until she could get it for herself. With her arms crossed she walked away towards her room.

Danny shrugged out of his trenchcoat and tossed it onto a nearby seat, and his rat minions began folding and sorting it while he shrugged out of the chains that crossed his chest. Glenn made a face at those and opened his notebook again, underlining the words 'less bondage-y'. The man reached into a pocket and pulled out a flat case and took his glasses out of it, setting them on his face. After he had tucked his fingerless gloves into his cargo pockets alongside the mask, Danny Hebert looked like nobody's vision of a superhero, just a middle-aged man wearing athletic all-weather gear. "So, I'm Danny," he said, offering Armsmaster a hand to shake.

"Colin," the team leader said. "Guys, introduce yourselves to Danny."

"Tom," Dauntless said, taking the next handshake.

"Hannah," Miss Militia said next.

"I'm Ethan," Assault said, giving a wave without standing from his couch. "Battery's name is Jenny."

"Troy," Velocity said, giving a handshake as he cruised by with a clipboard in hand. "Hey, Tom, you're doing appearance assignment now, right? Can I talk to you about this mall thing?"

"Rory," Triumph said, giving a shake and an upnod.

"Ah," Danny said. "Hey, Rory, there was something I was going to talk to you about when I get time."

"It'll be a while," Rory said, looking over at Glenn who lurked like an obese vulture biding his time impatiently. "The first couple days are a whirlwind."

Danny nodded. "It can wait a little bit."

Emily Piggot stepped forward, and the rest of the Protectorate found someplace else to be. Maybe they respected her or not, but clearly nobody had warm friendly feelings towards her. "Mister Hebert, I wanted you to know that we have your daughter moved in on the Wards floor, though we will not be announcing her as a new Ward for two weeks. We don't want to introduce you two together or someone will connect that you are related, and if she joins after it looks like she joined because of you and may prompt others to do the same. Also, if she transfers to Arcadia the same day as a new Ward is announced, it will be entirely too obvious."

"I appreciate it," Danny said. "And I appreciate how welcome everyone has made me feel."

"Indeed," she said drily. "Now, we've got you scheduled for eight public appearances this month, which is a little high for a new member, but your recognition is an asset we won't squander. If you're going to be doing any public appearances or endorsements, my office will make the arrangements. We're going to send you with Glenn for costume and image, and once he's satisfied we'll be setting up an appointment with a photographer to get you some promotional shots and a designer for figurines or action figures. I don't think your motif would play well on lunchboxes, but backpacks could be a good start and we'll focus-test from there. And we can debut your new costume at the new zoo exhibit on Thursday. After that there's a charity event-"

"I was hoping to talk to you about a patrol schedule," he said. He had sent up the idea of placing the rest of the Protectorate on quick-response duties, which would let them spend more time relaxing and training, more time engaging criminals, and less time traveling for the sake of traveling. But he would take the patrol duties himself, scouring the city for action that they would respond to.

She nodded brusquely. "I saw your proposal and I think it's a great idea, with a couple of amendments. First of all, your patrol routes need to be above ground. It sends the wrong message that you hide underground, and we want you visible as a symbol. Second, the choice of vehicles, we don't want you on a bicycle or anything pedal-driven, audiences find things like that to be snobbish and elitist, a sign of leisure and not duty."

"If I'm visible I can't observe and gather evidence on my own," he pointed out. "And I could become a target, I've got a significant amount of enemies in the city."

"We're not looking for another Brockton Bay Bust," she said. "It's about maintaining a presence in the city. You're the big issue du jour, so we need to keep you out where people can see you. Now then, I'm going to have to hand you off to my Assistant Director Tagg and Mister Chambers, I've got a teleconference in five minutes." She stepped towards the elevator, swiped her card and headed up to the administrative level.

"Now then," Glenn said, rubbing his hands together. Danny felt like he was now in the clutches of a secret villain. "Normally we'd be doing this next step in my office, but your mask is an issue and my assistants aren't cleared for your identity. Let's head over to the secondary console, I've got my sketches and measurements loaded onto the internal server, we can pull them up on this display."

"That's a map table," Tagg pointed out. "It's used for tactical displays and unit coordination."

"Super," Glenn said without listening. He started typing, and alternate costumes started appearing. "Now, the first thing is to soften your image. I was thinking that white mice could be a good direction to go, rather that big nasty brown rats."

"Kind of a pet-store vibe," Danny said. "The kind that are fed to snakes."

Glenn adjusted his square-framed glasses. "As opposed to the creatures that spread the Black Death. Look, this Wharf Rat persona is just one day of bad press away from Sewer Rat, or Plague Rat. I won't soft-pedal this, Danny, you're going to need a top-to-bottom rework, everything is on the drawing board. Name, costume, methods, equipment, everything."

Danny took the other set of controls, and started scrolling through the sketches that Glenn had laid out. "This looks like a mascot costume. This one reminds me of Hello Kitty. This is a spandex version of what I'm already wearing with a domino mask. This looks like a mascot costume with a cape. This looks like Mouse Protector's costume."

Colin poked his head in to see. "You might want to try that 'street druid' look you were going for the first time we met."

"Tell me about that," Glenn said, retaking the controls and ready to sketch in.

"Cloak, wooden mask and body armor. Wide grain, like oak or something. Lots of green and brown in the look, but kind of had a street-smart vibe." Colin grinned at Danny, and the older man realized that Colin was deliberately egging Glenn on to annoy him, to make up for the annoyances that Wharf Rat had visited on Armsmaster.

"The wooden armor didn't work out," Danny said. "I lost too much flexibility and I never needed the protection because I don't go near trouble."

"You don't need that much flexibility and some armor would bulk you out a bit," Glenn said.

"How much armor are you wearing?" Danny asked with wide guileless eyes and a perfect poker face.

Triumph stifled a guffaw of laughter. Assault didn't stifle his. Glenn glared, and everyone went back to their own issues. He turned his glare on Danny. "Mister Hebert, Wharf Rat, believe it or not I'm trying to help. For you this is about the Protectorate against the villains. You're fighting one battle, one enemy at a time. You think that if you just beat enough bad guys, there'll be a happy ending. The Director and I are fighting a different battle. It's been thirty years since capes appeared in our world. And in that time, villains have killed people and heroes have tried to stop them. Endbringers have attacked and capes have fought them back. We have organizations of heroes and gangs of villains. Capes and masks, secret identities, codenames. The number of parahumans is growing, escalating. But they're not integrating. It's all warlords and celebrities. And it's a matter of time before some high-level Master makes a play for national politics or some Brute just starts smashing and never stops. And when that happens, Mister Hebert? The humans will fight against the parahumans. Millions will die. Civil wars, us against them, you against me. It will be a war for survival, no quarter given. Unless we can get the populace to accept the capes on their own terms. Unless the PR war is won."

Danny sighed. "Look, I'll admit I've never thought about that. And it sounds pretty good. But two things: first of all, it sounds like what you need is a relatable hero in the Protectorate, an everyman with powers who's doing the right thing for the right reasons. Someone that people can empathize with instead of idealizing. And second, you guys are trying to use my publicity and name recognition, but you're trying to get me to change my name and my methods. I've got a proven winning formula, why are you trying to change it now?"

Glenn sighed and rocked back. "Have you been in the lobby of this building? Have you seen a poster from our PR department? The splash screen on the evening news? We're going to be shooting new pictures of the team. It will have Dauntless in the front, with Armsmaster and Miss Militia behind his shoulders. Behind Armsmaster, Assault and Battery and then you. Behind Miss Militia, Velocity and Triumph. Can you picture that in your head? What does it look like with all these shining avatars of justice and you skulking in the back with a trenchcoat and a gimp mask? Or, do we try to make you actually look like part of the team?"

"I'm coming back to this druid look," Colin said, tapping the screen. "I've got some superhard lightweight materials that can be molded and painted to look like wood. If we got with overlapping plates on the torso it won't cost you too much flexibility."

"But a druid that controls rats?" Glenn made a face of disgust.

"Rats and pigeons," Colin said. "I can rig something up. Probably not real pigeons, but realistic-looking drones that we can use to deploy payloads or just distract the villains. And maybe that thing about controlling urban elements like on that first night."

Glenn's fingers kept working on the Street Druid sketch, but he half-turned to the taller thinner man. "Tell me about that, urban elements?"

"When I first ran across our man Danny Hebert, after he had kicked five kinds of shit out of Lung, he was dressed in this wooden armor with a cloak. He was surrounded by rats, and the place was a huge damn mess. Trees had fallen on Lung, downed power lines, burst water pipes, a slick of burning gasoline, it looked like nature itself had been beating Lung down. Fire, water, lightning, trees, animals, everything. I know now that this was just the Wharf Rat going all-out and doing major collateral damage, but that's not what it looked like at the time."

"Let's stay clear of major property damage," Tagg said, speaking for the first time.

Glenn nodded. "Absolutely. No knocking trees down or power lines, but there may be something we can work with there. Pigeons and rats, we could fake up some special effects for other powers, like gas canisters to look like ground fog or something. A little sleight of hand, that's all. Can you help with that, Armsmaster?"

"Are you kidding?" Colin said, grinning wolfishly. "It's been a month since I've worked on anything except powered armor for my teammates and the Wards. I'd love the change of pace."

Danny saw the pieces fall into place. He had submitted a suggestion to the director that more of the Protectorate should wear armor with enhancements. There was a young girl on the Wards, Vista, who had enough power that she got called in for Endbringer attacks, but she was so vulnerable that a mugger with a switchblade could kill her before she became a teenager. Assault moved fast and hit harder, but he could move faster and hit harder. Velocity was very easy to hurt while his powers were active, and that could be helped. And so now apparently that was moved to the top of Armsmaster's priorities, kitting out the team and the Wards. And that was why Colin was just a bit annoyed with him lately.

Glenn tapped his round pink cheek as he looked over the sketch. "Hmm. Can't call it a 'street druid' though, it sounds condescending."

"Because it _is_ condescending," Danny pointed out.

"Right. Hmm, not 'urban', that gets reminiscent of racial issues. Maybe something simple like The Druid of Brockton Bay. People hear that a couple times, they start calling you the Druid for short, but they always remember that you're a fixture of the city, the Druid of Brockton Bay."

Danny turned his head to face the man. "You're actually pretty good at this, aren't you?"

"I am," Glenn said with no visible modesty or arrogance. "But I will admit, you raised a good point earlier about the relatable everyman hero, and keeping you recognizable for the time being. Also, we can sell successive lines of merchandise if we rebrand you a couple times as we go. That's why my last sketch was this," he said, flitting through the pictures that Danny had rejected, settling on one that showed a small variation of the Wharf Rat costume. "I'm not happy with it, because it's not my best work, but it's not _my_ work really," he said.

The mask was white instead of brown, there was no bandolier-chain or gloves, and the jacket had a small fur collar and trim on it that could either hint at the presence of rats or give them a place to hide in the open. The notes on the mask showed it to be spandex to get the superhero look instead of the gimp-mask look that Glenn insisted his current mask had. He had already notated that the mask would include a built-up cup around the mouth and nose like Danny's current mask. The illustration showed Wharf Rat surrounded by a flood of indistinct brown bodies shot through with white rats to give some contrast, and his jacket included a breast pocket that two white mice peeked out of.

"Just enough change to bring you out of the sewers and into the Protectorate," Glenn said, tapping his finger to the map table. "And we've got the Druid in reserve if we need a more extreme change."

"I'll be working on pigeon drones," Colin said, still grinning.

Danny considered. "If you just set robot pigeons loose, it'll look weird. My rats are coordinated, I can multitask with them. These twelve guys here," he said, gesturing towards the chair with his jacket, where a dozen rats still sat patiently, "can solve twelve different mazes at the same time. Give them some pencils and I can write out twelve letters to twelve people about twelve different subjects. They can move independently but synchronized. And that's a huge source of my strength, the way I can control them with such a fine touch. Whatever drones you give me won't have that, unless you make them remote-controlled in a way that I can operate with rats."

"A hundred pigeons with a hundred joysticks," Colin mused. "And each of them just as coordinated as your rats. There could be something there. Distractions, spies, but also a payload of their own. Gas pellets, throw cameras, small charges, things like that. Maybe even one that trails an invisible wire to conduct a charge, and burns itself out in a lightning bolt. This is doable."

Danny chuckled, and despite himself he was picking up a little excitement of his own at this new plan. Colin left the Hub for his workshop, off-handedly promising some prototypes by the close of the week.


	9. Chapter 9

"So, how was your first day as a member of the Protectorate?" Taylor asked when they sat down at Fugly Bob's. It was a rather low-rent burger place that the kids all seemed to love, and its tasteless charm was deliberately affected as the management could definitely afford to remodel. And fortunately it was just a block or two off the Boardwalk, an easy walk to the Protectorate HQ. The place was loud enough that he could be confident that nobody outside of their booth was going to hear them talking shop about Protectorate business.

"It was exhausting," he said. "But first, who's your friend?"

"Dad, this is Chris, he's Kid Win. Chris, my father," Taylor said, making the introductions before taking a sip of her Coke.

"A pleasure," the teen hero said, reaching over to shake. "Big fan."

"Likewise," Danny said. "So what's your tinker specialty?"

"Ray guns and anti-gravity, like Hero," the boy said. "So, how bad did Glenn work you over?"

Taylor butted in. "Who's Glenn?"

Kid Win took this question. "Do you remember that fat man that was always close to the Director? That's the head of our image and PR departments. The guy is a menace, I swear. He goes from city to city, team to team, whenever a new hero is inducted, and he works on their image. And some of us get sent back for retraining. If you ever notice that all the Wards have an almost compulsively good posture, that's on Glenn. He's the reason that Dauntless and Triumph both have such garish outfits. And that Revel had to get that tattoo removed from... well, he's a pain in the butt, if you'll pardon me saying so."

"He wanted to change my costume," Danny said. "Some of the sketches looked like mascot costumes. One was clearly inspired by Mouse Protector. It was pretty rough. But instead we're going to try me out with a white mask and some other minor tweaks and see if that helps some. There's more changes in the future, but we'll get to those later. How are you settling in with the Wards?"

There was a break as the waitress brought their order, three baskets of greasy cheeseburgers and French fries. They sorted out which was whose by condiments and seasonings, and arranged the baskets in front of the right people. Then Taylor answered the question. "So far, so good. They helped me move in, they were really impressed that we were able to get accommodations as parent and child since all their families live in their own homes and they only see their families on weekends or special occasions. And we continue our plans to get me accepted as a Ward. Oh, and they taught me how to use the research and dispatch console."

"Everyone has to learn it," Kid Win said, after swallowing his French fries. "But she picked it up faster than most."

Danny patted his daughter's hand proudly, and then turned back to the tinker. "So, what's the deal with the director, Piggot? Nobody wants to say it, but everyone seems to know it."

Kid Win went quiet, darting his eyes around subconsciously as the subject change activated a bubble of paranoia in his psyche. "Okay, so you know Nilbog, right?"

"Crazy villain in Ellisburg, makes monsters, took over a town, now it's walled off and guarded to make sure his monsters don't ever leave," Danny recited.

The teen nodded. "At first, they didn't realize what they were dealing with, and they sent a PRT team of soldiers and a handful of capes to find the guy and bring him to justice. The Director was one of the only survivors of that, and she barely survived. She lost so much muscle tissue from her legs that they weren't sure she would ever walk. Even her organs, some things that were almost vital got... eaten. It was nightmarish. And so when she recovered they bumped her up to a Director's desk. Promoted her over about four levels of management as a reward for her sacrifice and a bribe to keep her from suing the PRT for putting her in that position. She went straight from assault-squad soldier to running a city for the Taskforce and reporting directly to the Chief Director."

Danny whistled. "Damn. Well, I guess we know she doesn't have the capacity to trigger as a parahuman."

Kid Win shuddered. "Like a trigger event but without powers afterwards. No thanks."

The table went quiet in the midst of the bustling, noisy restaurant. Taylor ate a few French fries then said, "Honestly, she seems exactly like the sort of person that could have a power-hungry supervillain working in the office next door and never realize it."

"Let's add that to the long list of things to never say inside the PHQ, okay?" the teenage boy said, wincing dramatically.

Taylor paused. "Why, is the place bugged? Monitored?"

"Constantly," Kid Win said. "Anything there is to see and hear, they see and hear."

Danny chuckled. "They've even installed motion detectors and infrared sensors in the crawlspaces, elevator shafts, air ducts and insulation since the first time I broke in. It's all very 1984."

"What happened in 1984?" Chris asked, his forehead creasing.

The older man was taken aback. "Uh, wow, okay it was a book about-"

"I was kidding," Kid Win said, his face splitting in a sudden smile. "There's something about people your age that makes you assume that people my age don't know anything except texting and Nicktoons. It's a little fun to mess around when I can."

"You fooled me once," Danny said, shaking a finger mock-sternly.

Kid Win turned back to Taylor. "Now, you're going to have to really watch out for Glenn. See, you're a blank slate, and a high-profile opportunity. On the one hand, you've got no powers naturally, though we'll be going to lengths to hide that fact. That means that he can make nearly any arbitrary demands on your costume and there's no real reason to deny them. On the other hand, you're going to be the example of young teens that sign up with the Protectorate as part of their new recruiting drive, so he has to make sure to make a splash with you."

Taylor thought about this. "I'm growing less comfortable with this plan."

"It's not that hard," her father reassured her. "He's the give-an-inch-take-a-mile type, but he's a bulldog for that first inch. Just set the starting line a mile back from where you really want it, guard it hard, and finally begrudgingly let him get his foot in the door. Then watch him bulldoze his way all the way to where you wanted to go in the first place."

The boy Ward blinked a few times, considering. "That's really good advice."

"I wish someone had given me that advice yesterday," Danny said, shrugging. "So, it looks like they're going to be screwing around with my patrol suggestion."

"Good way or bad?" she said, suspiciously.

Danny gestured for her to wait while he bit and chewed his burger. When his mouth was clear, he explained. "They want me out on patrol as a symbol, so they want me out in the open, and they want executive control of what sort of vehicle I drive. They agree that the rest of the Protectorate, and even Wards, are better as a quick-response force with myself as a patroller, but they want to hamper my ability to actually catch crooks, for the purpose of working their PR angle. It's sort of a compromise."

Taylor shook her head. "We worked long and hard on that, you and I. We worked out a patrol pattern that makes it easiest for the QRF to respond immediately and for central to monitor your movements, and mapped it to the city's storm system, with alternate routes for heavy rain days. And they're blowing that off so you can ride around like it's the Rose Bowl parade waving the Protectorate flag as publicly as possible."

Kid Win arched an eyebrow. "You sound more invested in this than he does," the boy noted.

Danny chuckled. "She should, most of the work was hers and the original idea too. Most of the policy memos I've been referring to Piggot come from conversations with Taylor. Including the suggestion that Armsmaster should spend more time in his workshop and less time bruising criminals, and that someone needs to do a quantified study of how much diminishing returns Dauntless is getting."

Chris glanced sideways at the girl. "Are you the reason that I'm getting more demands that I spend my workshop hours designing power-armor components for my teammates?"

"Depends. Are you pissed about it?"

"A little."

"Then I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it would incriminate me," she said, and took a drink.

"Frickin' knew it," he grumbled, and took a bite of his burger.

* * *

Wharf Rat stepped off the elevator and stripped off the mask, pulling it off over his head. He brushed down his wispy hair with one hand while the other handed his mask off to one of the white mice that poked out of his pocket and accepted his glasses from the other. He hung the jacket up while the two white mice scrambled out and headed to the feeding station set up in the corner for them.

"Hell of a day?" Velocity asked him from the Hub console. He was out of costume entirely, lounging in sweatpants and a tanktop.

"Hell of a day," Danny answered. "What's the situation?"

"The team deployed for an armed robbery in progress, but on the way back we diverted to deal with a police chase, and then a bunch of suspicious people that could be Empire 88 thugs scouting out new territory to claim."

"Could be a ploy to distract the heroes and keep them tied up," Wharf Rat said, catching his chin thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger.

"Or it could be a full moon," Velocity said. "Hey, could you watch the station for me? I've been here a while and I need to take a leak."

Danny nodded. "Sure thing. Don't rush," he said as the other man started to blur with motion. Velocity slowed back down to normal speed and walked away. He sat at the console, pulled up five windows for Assault, Battery, Dauntless, Triumph and Miss Militia, and watched them with five mice while he kept an overhead view of their tracking devices laid over a topographical map.

"Wharf Rat filling in for Velocity at the comms," he said into the all-call channel. "Someone brief me."

"Suspicious individuals, public park, night time, possible gang members but can't assume," Miss Militia responded. "Numbers unknown, roughly a dozen, going for an envelopment maneuver."

"Roger. Assault, take about ten steps to your left, Battery take about ten to your right, you guys are super bunched up. The two fastest runners on site should field more of the possible escape routes. Dauntless, move a little closer to Miss Militia, she's one most likely to need your force field, and it leaves you a good position to go aerial for maneuvering. Miss Militia, do you have beanbags, rubber bullets, nonlethal munitions?"

"Not even flashbangs," she said. "Sorry, I've tried before."

"Okay, that means that Triumph is the only one on-site who has a ranged nonlethal power, and it's area-effect too. Your costume's flashy enough to be recognizable, so you're on point to provoke a response. If they attack or run, shout them. If they are non-hostile, stand down and produce a PR moment."

Triumph keyed his mouthpiece. "You've been around Glenn too much this week."

"I guarantee you're right, but I might be right too."

Danny watched the heroes shift position to be ready for a confrontation or an escape, and then Triumph stepped forward to make himself seen and gauge their reactions. It seemed easy enough to him, watching all the cameras at the same time and making the easy calls. It helped significantly that he had researched the team extensively and had a pretty confident handle on what powers they did and did not have. He kept his own two eyes on the overhead map and telemetry readouts, trusting the mice to watch the headcams.

"Stand down team," Triumph murmured. "They're a gang, but not hostile."

"What do you mean?" Danny asked, looking over at Triumph's headcam. Mouse eyes were great for watching an area, but they weren't as great for focusing on fine details of a darkened grainy monitor. "Oh."

The teenagers were wearing Mickey Mouse masks and long coats as they walked the park. They recognized the hero and moved in, some asking questions and others trying to act cooler than the others while the Protectorate moved into PR mode. He heard at least one of them asking Dauntless if he had met the Wharf Rat, what was he like in person. Danny cut off the sound and looked over at the overhead map to distract himself. He found himself embarrassed over the attention and reactions.

"It gets a bit weird," Velocity said as he approached. "I've seen that look before. I recommend holding onto it. When you get comfortable with people hero-worshipping you, you're halfway to being an insufferably arrogant asshole. Try to delay that process."

Danny chuckled. "I think I will. But the way they're pushing me into these public appearances, I'm afraid I'll get jaded to it fast."

The other man dropped into the chair at his side, watching the screens. He hit the playback button to see what had happened, including the redistribution and movements, then nodded. "Not bad. Your way is better than what I had. Though unless they had a cape in their group, it wouldn't make any appreciable difference. And if there is a cape, all bets are off. So, I hear you're killing it with these public appearances. Public speaking, meet-and-greets, the whole shmeer."

"I suppose," Danny said. "But I have to confess that I cheat my way through them every time. I've got my speeches in the notes of my smart phone, and I keep it in my pocket with a mouse. I'm literally reading my notes to a crowd, and they can't see my face. Sometimes I even close my eyes and pretend they're not there. And the meet-and-greets are a bit harder, but if you keep moving and memorize a dozen excuses you can avoid getting sucked into anything past small-talk. And since the mice can tell me whose hands they've already shaken, and keep notes on who I've met, I avoid the really awkward moments."

Velocity nodded. "It gets harder. Wait until you're doing interviews. Or worse yet, 'hard-hitting' interviews where they try to trap you with vaguely-worded questions and accuse you of weaseling when you clarify your answers."

Danny winced. "That sucks. So what do you do about that?"

"In most cases, you try to get someone like Glenn who does this for a living to get you an earpiece so he can feed you answers, or you research the heck out of the questions you're likely to face," the speedster said. "In my case, you accelerate yourself so you've got ten times as much time to think about answers before you speak."

"That does not sound like advice I can profit from."

"Yeah," Velocity nodded, grinning. "it's pretty awesome being me."

* * *

"Your request is denied," Piggot said into her handset.

Danny took a long breath. "You said that, but you didn't say why."

"It's denied because I've told you it's denied," she said. "This is the Parahuman Response Taskforce. Your pet projects do not involve parahumans or the response to them, so the PRT and subsidiaries thereof will not get involved, especially in things that involve local politics."

He felt his grip tighten on the receiver, and he counted to three before he replied. "This isn't politics, this is a charity event. Just fundraising for a project. We're not lobbying for candidates or pushing for legislation, just developing a fund for repairs to the ferry. If the council wants to reactivate the ferry, the funds go to defraying their costs, if they do not then the funds sit in trust until such time as the council changes its mind."

"Most charities are to help a poor child get cancer treatments. Or disaster relief. You are attempting to influence and sway policy decisions of the host city, and to use your mask and publicity to back that attempt. Even if you deny it or dress it up with cheap sophistry, you're still influencing public policy. Your request is denied."

"But it will boost the local economy, it will get poor kids out of poor neighborhoods! It will reduce the social factors that cause criminality, at the source!"

"And it will put us out of a job," Piggot pointed out. "Moreover, it will bring poor people into wealthy neighborhoods looking for handouts, and it will offend the major power players in the city, the financial backers and politicians that we depend on for support. And it will be a visible incident of the Protectorate meddling in non-parahuman affairs. Do you know why the PRT is given authority over the Protectorate and not the other way around? It's because parahuman power must be tempered and restrained and monitored, and human power must not. This is checks and balances, Mister Hebert."

"This isn't checks and balances," he pointed out. "Balances means that the two organizations have mutual restrictions over one another."

"Just checks then," she retorted. "When you triggered and got powers, you lost your authority and participation in human affairs and politics. Stay in your world, leave us in ours."

He sputtered. "It's the same world! I look out the same windows as you, and I hear the same news broadcasts! Those people on the street need help from someone, and we're just sitting here in ivory towers, denying them help, and you act like this neutrality makes us moral! Like the boundaries between justice and subjugation would melt down if we acknowledge that people should have opportunities!"

"You're asking us to meddle," she said. "There's a zero-tolerance policy on meddling. If we start, we begin a path that leads to us dictating policy to governments. If we never start, we never reach that point."

He paced around, the phone cord dragging on the ground. "It's not a strong-arm maneuver! It's a public appearance for a charity to help poor kids in a long-term, sustained way! If helping the desperate is a slippery slope, then maybe we need to be on that slope!"

"You have stopped being rational, Mister Hebert," Director Piggot said sharply. "I will disconnect this call."

"Wait! What about my other request?"

"I feel I should deny it as well, in light of the conversation we've just had. A man who would argue irrationally against our neutrality policies is likely not a good candidate for that visit. But I won't be petty by shutting it down, I will pass your request to the appropriate parties. His doctors can accept or deny your request at their discretion, and you can put scheduling requests through my office." She hung up first, and Danny slammed the handset down on the receiver with a snarl of rage.

Battery looked up from her book, surprised by the slamming noise. Assault turned her way. "He was talking to the Director," he said, and she nodded and looked back down at her book.

Dauntless stepped close and offered a wry smile. "I know, she can be trying. But she's not entirely unreasonable."

"Of course she's unreasonable," Danny blurted. "And I think I'm a little closer to diagnosing what's wrong around here."

"Diagnosing?" Triumph asked, looking up from the console.

Danny sighed. "Look, the Director and the PRT have unchecked authority over your lives. Our lives, now. She can write out a policy memo that dictates when you wake up, what you eat, what you wear. She receives requests for time off and travel in or out of the city, which she approves or denies as she sees fit. She tells you what you can do or say, with whom, and in what way. There is a massive power imbalance at play here. She has authority, we have obligations. This is not checks and balances; this is a knife at your throat. And it's so easy to defend her. You remember that sometimes she approves requests that suit her purposes, and sometimes she doesn't deny you privileges just out of spite, sometimes she exerts less authoritarian power over your lives than she possibly could. That is Stockholm Syndrome."

"Heck of a diagnosis," Assault said. "You've been here twelve days now and you've diagnosed us all with mass Stockholm syndrome."

"Are you a prisoner?" Danny asked.

"No, of course not."

"Can you prove that you re not a prisoner?" Danny asked.

Assault and Battery traded a look, and he picked up a book rather than answer.

Triumph frowned. "Honestly, sounds more like a regular abusive relationship than Stockholm."

"You may be right," Danny said, considering it. "One of those 'baby why do you make me beat you' kind of relationships."

"So she's in charge," Velocity said. "Someone's always in charge. Everyone else deals with it without accusing their boss of imprisoning them or being an abusive partner."

Miss Militia shook her head. "Not necessarily. I don't take Wharf Rat's side in this, I think he is speaking out of his anger, but what the Director is to us, is not just a boss to an employee. Much closer to a commanding officer to soldiers. We are conscripts in a war, after all."

"Which means he's treading between insubordination and mutiny," Velocity pointed out.

Dauntless frowned. "I think this discussion needs to be tabled. Not necessarily permanently, but for the time being it seems important that everyone calm down and consider their words, and consider their position. Look, Danny, you clearly don't cope well being cooped up in the Hub. You've had a tough adjustment, and admittedly Piggot has taken no pains to make it easier on you. Why don't you hit a patrol, clear your head?"

"I'm not scheduled for a patrol," he said. "And in the mood I'm in, taking impromptu interviews on the street could be a disaster. I can't handle a PR moment right now."

"Use your old patrol routes," Dauntless said. "It'll put your back on your balance, I'm sure. And it's a minor reprimand for taking an unscheduled patrol on your team leader's orders, nothing that goes into either of our records."

Danny paused, and nodded. "Thanks Tom."

The bigger, younger man clapped him on the shoulder. "Come back when you're calm, I'll see what I can do about helping you mesh with the group."

Mice scrambled up the jacket as he took it down off the coat rack. Danny knew that Dauntless was sending him on patrol so that the other Protectorate heroes could talk about him in privacy, but it was still a good idea. He stepped onto the elevator and took it down to the motor pool. He had his mask on by the time the doors opened, and he stepped out into the hangar.

The VTOL was set at once side and his tunnel-buggy was parked alongside the three motorcycles for Armsmaster, Miss Militia and Triumph. It wasn't the same buggy, his original was parked in a side corridor off a disused storm drain a few miles away. This one was made for him by Armsmaster in his workshop, assembled the right way. Rather than gnawed wood, it was made of machined alloys and die-cast polymers, lightweight and flexible and nearly unbreakable. It was just as well-shaped, and had the fixtures that Danny had gone without before. Headlights, radio, door locks, windshield, air conditioning. He opened it with the remote key fob, and slid himself down into it. But rather than out the hangar door and onto the streets, he turned it back to the freight elevator and rode down to the basement.

And from the basement, the tunnels. Riding like this didn't have the thrill that it used to; the new buggy had a motor and not a bicycle pedal to power it. It was more like driving a car than he really liked, he had lost his wife in a car accident and he preferred safer vehicles like bicycles. Still, he could tune that out and concentrate on the navigation, the rats, and he felt better about it. He paused a few blocks from PHQ to muster up a swarm of rats and load them into the cargo hatch of the buggy, which was more like the trunk of a car that ran the complete length of the undercarriage.

The city was mostly quiet these days. With the ABB gone, the 5th Street Merchants gone, Coil and his soldiers gone, and the remnants of Empire Eighty-Eight having left the city, all that was really left were the Undersiders, the Travelers, and Faultline's mercenary crew. He wondered how long the mercenaries would hang around, without mastermind villains around to hire them. The Wharf Rat could either pursue leads on the Undersiders or the Travelers, or go on a long ride and put in a few hundred phone calls reporting mundane crimes. But if he tried anything that started to look like the Brockton Bay Bust, someone would call Piggot and she'd get involved. It was just easier to look into the Travelers. After all, he'd promised Tattletale he wouldn't snoop into their business. And he was still nursing a significant grudge against Trickster. He could take his frustrations with the Director and take them out on a professional villain who had threatened to cut his throat and bleed him out onto the stained table of a run-down dive bar.

And that would mean following the only trail that they had left.

Since Coil's arrest, the Travelers had gone underground in the most literal way. The lair that they had assaulted to rescue Dinah had included a massive vault that had reeked of fear and hate and raw meat and massive animals. That vault was one of the most disquieting things that Danny had seen since he started superheroics. And there had been a hole burned out of the back of it, a perfectly round tunnel with the edges melted like candle wax, slagged through down to the sanitary sewers below, with massive oddly-shaped footprints pressed into the melted concrete, like something titanic had walked out of there before the ground had finished cooling and hardening. The best assumption from all involved was that this was one of Genesis' forms, as she and the rest of the Travelers had worked for Coil. And Sundancer's projected power was a perfectly-round ball of unfathomable heat that could easily melt through stone. But when the various heroes had seen that, they had held a conference to decide what to do.

On the one hand, leaving the tunnel open would let the heroes follow the trail when they were ready. But it could also allow whatever was down there to attack whenever it was ready and they were not. If they filled the tunnel, they lost that trail and would have to find the Travelers some other way, but the Travelers would be cut off from Coil's base and whatever hidden resources there might be. So they had sealed the tunnel with a mixture of containment foam and poured concrete. The Travelers had made several raids since then, still clearly in the city. They had stolen money wherever they could, or just food. They had pulled off a rash of convenience-store robberies just to get the easy cash instead of trying for a bank job or a shot at one of the city's underground casinos.

Danny drove over to that region, and began assembling hordes of rats. He infiltrated them down into the sewers anywhere he could, finding cracks where he could or just finding public toilets and having the rats swim down through the pipes until they came out in the sewers. He wished he could cover his nose, but it wasn't his nose that was picking up this endless scent of waste and rot. It was hundreds of noses that were hundreds of times more powerful than his. He felt like he should be puking, but his eyes didn't even water. Different physiological reactions for sensations carried by his power, similar to how he did not really feel the pain that his rats felt when they were hurt. He began canvassing the area, gridding it out and searching for clues.

He spent over an hour sending his rats back and forth before he realized what an idiot he was being. A clue that would have been obvious to a human in the sewer but escaped his rats' notice for an hour. Well, if a human had a rat's nightvision, or if a rat had a human's height. There was a trail carved in the ceiling, right down the middle. A combination of slightly melted concrete and smoke-singe that was easily spotted once he was looking in the right place instead of trying to get his rats to smell anything except sewage in a sewer. It followed the path from the slagged out tunnel from Coil's hideout, and then started following tunnels. It didn't seem entirely purposeful, it doubled back by accident more than once, and it was inconsistent as if the heat source that created it had stopped a few times for several minutes before moving on. It tended towards larger tunnels, and seemed to prefer downstream to upstream, as if trying to find a way out. None of the maintenance hatches were opened or tampered with, the trail just went right by them without hesitation. Danny had to scratch his head at that. Why would the Travelers stay down there deliberately? Something wasn't connecting.

Danny used the buggy's onboard computer to look up the city's sewer map to try to predict where the path would go. He had little luck, sanitary sewers followed the city's layout from its founding and were only amended or appended at need, whereas the storm drains followed the current street layout and were more consistently plotted. And his rats were traveling slower than he was used to, swimming or wading in the murky muck was slow going, and the walls of the place were one of the few surfaces that rats could not climb easily. And besides that, the level was getting higher. Something had the tunnel blocked off and wasn't letting the sewage drain like it was supposed to.

"Damn," he swore. Odds were that the Travelers had covered their tracks by sealing a passage behind them. Probably with no consideration for how this was going to screw up the city's waste systems. Maybe they were dumb enough to leave an obvious trail in the ceiling, but they were smart enough to block the passage to keep anyone from following them. He took a long look at his maps while he pulled his rats back, and tried to figure out where the blockage was and where the other side of it would be. Some of these tunnels fed into the tunnel and as he checked them to see if they were backed up it helped him narrow down where the problem was. And this outflow tunnel that was empty showed him where the other side of the blockage was. He sent his minions forth experimentally, watching closely, and as they converged on the empty space he narrowed it down.

There, under the processing station. A large round chamber, with one massive intake pipe that was fed by dozens of others, and dozens of outflow pipes that led to the dozens of pumps that filtered out the waste from the water. He started typing again. He searched "Brockton Bay" "sewer substation 115" under the "news" tab. He read, he stared, he read more, and he moved his rats in on the chamber. He could see it on his map but he wanted to get rodent eyes on it.

"Console, this is Wharf Rat," he said into his comms.

"Go for console," Miss Militia said in return.

"Console, do you have anything there on the substation 115 incident from about three weeks ago?"

"What incident?"

"Sewage reclamation plant, substation 115. The news reports that three men who worked here went berserk and started killing all the other workers with their bare hands or hand tools, and one more went home and killed his whole family before he was shot dead by police like the other three."

"Oh right, that," Miss Militia said. "None of the men had history of mental illness or violence. They were badly mutilated, the authorities hypothesized it was exposure to toxic waste that left them deformed and insane. They were also naked, if that means anything."

"It might," he said. _Funny, the Travelers escape into the sewers, and two days later some sewer workers turn into berserk monsters, and nobody draws the connection_ , he thought to himself.

"Wharf Rat, what do you have?" she asked, recognizing his tone.

"I might have found the Travelers' new hideout," he replied. "I think they're directly underneath the substation, or inside it."

"Wharf Rat, stand by at your location. Do not advance, do not engage. You're on a team now, dammit, act like it!"

The rats smelled something new, something other than sewage. They smelled the death of rats. They smelled the pheromones laced in the urine of a rodent at the moment of its death, a warning to others to avoid the area. First one tunnel then another, he smelled it on every path in or out of the chamber. Whatever was down there, it was uniquely well-equipped to deal with what he could send after it.

"Okay, Miss Militia, I'm not advancing," he said. "Standing by for instructions."

Things were quiet for several minutes, and he doodled around on the onboard computer, looking for more information on substation incident. Finally his earpiece clicked again to open the connection. "Wharf Rat, this is console, your orders are to pull back to PHQ at this time," Miss Militia's voice came in.

"What the hell for?" he demanded. "I'm on site; you guys are the response force to bring the firepower and the decisive win. You come to me, I don't pull back. This is the Travelers, they worked for Coil, they escaped several times, if we miss them we might never catch them again." He started moving his rats up, trying to smell past the twin smells of sewage and death. Maybe he could make out enough of the chamber to make a tactical decision-

"Because two weeks ago Dinah Alcott said that there was a 96% chance that joining the Protectorate would get you killed," Miss Militia said. "And after a lot of questions, they narrowed down the day to today. This morning she predicted a 50% you'd die today, and this afternoon it's shot back up to 96%."

"Oh," he said. "Damn. I'm hundreds of feet away, I'm in a different tunnel system altogether. There's nothing to connect me directly even if I do attack. I should be safe as houses."

"And yet, 96% chance you die today," Miss Militia said.

"Maybe coming back is what gets me killed," he mused.

"That seems less likely," Miss Militia said. "For one thing, right now it sounds like there's a 96% chance you're going to ignore me, rather than a 96% chance you're going to listen to me. So that makes it more likely that ignoring me gets you killed."

Danny opened his mouth to object, but her reasoning was pretty sound. "Damn. Well, I've made her predictions go fuzzy before. I beat longer odds than that when I rescued her."

The woman's voice sounded tired. "Are you really trying to claim that the four-percent chance is more likely than the ninety-six-percent chance because of 'fuzzy'? And that it's worth your life to try it?"

"I suppose not," he sighed. "All right, I'm coming in."

He spent some time moving the rats out of the sewer, evacuating all of them to safer grounds, even the ones that were down in the sewers when he got there. He cleared the area just to be sure and safe, and then he turned the engine on and headed back to the PHQ.

When he walked back into the Hub, the rest of the team was lined up; even Armsmaster was present, out of uniform. Miss Militia was still sitting at the console, and she looked up to give him a thumbs-up. "Your odds dropped to a few hundredths of a percent by the time you were halfway home," she said.

"Right," Dauntless said. "So, we decided that we need to do something to help you feel at home. We thought about training exercises, but then this whole Traveler thing came up. Look, you were out there in the tunnels, but back here it was madness. We had calls going back and forth from the Director's office to Dinah Alcott and back, and it looked like I was going to get a lot more than a mild reprimand for sending you away. Anyway, we thought about training exercises, we thought about going for a tour around the city in the VTOL, we brainstormed a lot of ideas. And then Assault mentioned that we should ask your daughter. And your daughter told us the best way for us to bond with you as friends, was with these," he said, and the team stepped in two directions, splitting down the middle to reveal a trio of kegs, already iced and tapped, and a table full of finger-foods and crudit s.

Danny stared for a minute, considering, then nodded. "Taylor's a good kid," he said, and took off his mask and stepped forward.

* * *

Triumph was icing his arm, his face still green. "I can't believe I tried to go hit-for-hit with Assault," he groaned.

"I can't believe you insisted that your boosted physiology meant you could match all the rest of us drink-for-drink," Battery pointed out. "And you never realized that every time your back was turned Velocity was in super-speed burning off the alcohol."

"I'm an idiot," Triumph groaned, moving the icepack from his bruised arm to his pounding head.

"I can't believe I forgot that I have an a.m. public appearance today," Dauntless said, tugging on his armor. "I may want to borrow Wharf's full-face mask so nobody knows how crappy I feel."

Assault walked past and paused. "Talk to Glenn, he's got makeup artists that can make you look like you're not hung over." He made his way back to the bathroom without looking back.

"I can't believe I'm on consoles again today," Miss Militia groused. "No patrols scheduled, no battles scheduled, just overwatch. I can't spend any more time on Facebook, I just can't."

Danny sat down next to Triumph. "Morning. Breakfast?"

"I'm gonna need the cafeteria to bring it up, I can't go anywhere today," the youngest member of the Protectorates said. Triumph had the look of a fresh-faced All-American college athlete, but today that college athlete was at the tail end of an ugly, ugly bender.

"I'll call," Danny said, and got up to go dial for toast and coffee for the younger man, sausage and sunny-side eggs for himself with orange juice. He went back to the wraparound couch and sat down, moving carefully so as not to upset the young man. "So, Rory- is it okay if I call you Rory? I feel like once I've helped a man do a kegstand he and I are on a first-name basis."

"Rory's good," Triumph said, his face drawn. His superhuman strength was well-sapped by his hangover.

"Rory, I actually got to chat with your father a few times," Danny said. "Though, truthfully he and I didn't agree on that many things."

Rory shrugged. "Meh. He can be hard to agree with."

Danny nodded noncommittally. "So anyway, that's how I found out about the one-point-nine million dollars."

Rory groaned. "Man, he's not supposed to talk about that! He knows that, dammit." He looked around to make sure none of the other members were listening in, and lowered his voice just in case.

"Actually, I just had one question he wouldn't answer for me," Danny said. "I asked him if it was worth it, and he just wouldn't tell me."

Rory chuckled. "Well, present circumstances aside, I'd say it was totally worth it. I mean, sure there were a few weeks that I was really pissed, felt like everything had been taken from me. Things weren't going the way I wanted, and all my plans for my life were kaput. Lemme back up: I always wanted to be an athlete. I trained hard, a wide variety of sports. I practiced in off-seasons, working on coordination and stamina, strength and speed. I tried out for every team, and I dominated in junior high, in high school. I did well in college, but it was getting obvious that I wasn't going to get drafted, wasn't going to go pro. And that was all I wanted, you know? I couldn't think of anything else I would ever want. I threw a fit, and I it was just ugly. I look back on those times with embarrassment; it was really immature of me. So my dad cut a deal, and I got the formula. Just like I wanted, superhuman physical attributes. Coordination and stamina, strength and speed. And on top of it, a sonic shout. I was elated, I was going to make the pro leagues and be famous. And then like three weeks later, all the pro leagues start adding clauses that parahumans can't play. My hopes, dashed, my career, vanished. Snatched away just as I was sure I had it all in my grasp. I was a mess, but I recovered. I grew out of it. I realized that my dreams were what was wrong, I could do so much more than throw a ball now. I could be a hero, I could help people, I could save lives. And now I'm here."

Danny was almost paralyzed with shock. That was Mayor Christner's secret: he had bought his son superpowers. That was the secret that was more important than his life, his career, his freedom.

Two points of shock came with that: first, it was possible to buy superpowers if you knew the right people. That alone made Danny's head swim. Second, what kind of people were selling these superpowers if they put that kind of fear into the man? What threats had they made that he would sooner go to prison and lose everything than discuss them?

"That's pretty amazing," Danny said after a few seconds. Rory didn't notice anything odd in his reaction.

"Yeah, if you say so. What's amazing is how much of an asshole I was before I came here."

"I think it speaks well to your character that you got past it," Danny said, as if by rote. "Hang on, breakfast is here."

He brought Rory his coffee and toast, and took his own food to a quiet corner to eat alone and consider what he'd learned. He turned over his thoughts, coming to his conclusions, for almost a half-hour before a noise jolted him. His cell phone rang, and he checked it to see the Director's office calling him. "Hello?"

"Mister Hebert, this is about your request to visit the asylum," Director Piggot said. "It seems the doctors have been very eager for your to call, and they have asked me to expedite this meeting. So with that understanding, you are expected to be ready for transport at 1400 hours today."

"Understood," he said, and she hung up.

Transport was not the PHQ VTOL, but rather a large vehicle that seemed a combination of a high-tech supersonic transport and a gleaming metallic dragon. He recognized the general design, variations on this theme had been seen for over a decade, the creations of the world's greatest tinker: Dragon.

"Afternoon, Dragon," Danny said, stepping out onto the tarmac as the gleaming machine touched down. Its wings were an array of jet propulsions, nozzles that controlled velocity and thrust as the wings extended and fanned.

"Good afternoon, Wharf Rat," the dragon boomed. Its mouth did not move, the voice came from speakers in its hull. "This model is not designed for troop transport, it was built for prisoner detention. I'm afraid you will be riding in a cell."

Danny laughed aloud. "I am positive that my director knew that when she requisitioned it."

"This was the model that was flying over this exact route, it's only a few miles out of my way to stop by and take a passenger," Dragon said. The voice was mechanical and digitized, but there was a vague burr of an accent he couldn't place.

Danny waved negligently. "Whatever. Let's go, don't let me hold you up."

The dragon reared upright, and its chest cracked open with a pneumatic hiss. A crevice two feet deep separated, and folded out, revealing a cavity that looked less like a cell and more like a padded coffin. The forelimbs helped him up in position, more gently than they were designed to do, and once he was pressed into place the carapace hissed shut and sealed around him. He was supported well enough that he barely felt the jolt of liftoff.

"Can you hear me?" he asked.

"Certainly," she replied. The voice was still digitized but the sound quality was higher in here than through the external speakers.

"Good. I just wanted to say it's a pleasure to meet you. You're a legend."

"Legend is a legend. I'm a tinker."

He scoffed. "False modesty, you know you're the best there is. But I've got a question for you, Miss Dragon."

"By all means."

"Why do you call these creations of yours 'suits'?"

"That's your question?"

"Yeah. I mean, you're not in here with me. It's been recorded that these machines of yours have been destroyed before, and yet you live, so they're automated or remote-piloted. Very expertly, obviously, and they're impressive as hell. But if you're not wearing it like a suit, why call it a suit?"

"There's been a long tradition of heroes in suits, and not much of a tradition for remote-operated vehicles," she replied.

"You're frickin' Dragon. You have the influence and recognition to start your own traditions and conventions," he pointed out. "But I guess my question is really a segue into another question altogether: why don't you actually make suits?"

"I beg your pardon?" she said, notably surprised.

"Sorry if that sounded impertinent, but it's been bugging me since my daughter pointed it out," he said. "It just seems like a more effective use of time and materials. For one thing, your technology can save a dozens of heroes every year. With an edge on survivability, that's more heroes to detain villains, more heroes for Endbringer defense, more heroes for fundraising or public relations. But also, your tech, as good as it is, is not really automated. As famous as you are, lots of people pay attention to you, and patterns do emerge. It's pretty public knowledge that your suits are either under your direct remote control, or operating on automated piloting. Genius work, yes, decades ahead of human technology, yes, but it's not as good as it could be, and it's not as good as if there was a living pilot, with powers of their own, operating the technology. You could remove the need for refining the programming and direct your attention to offensive and defensive capabilities, production, what have you. Narrow focus, greater results."

"You think programming AIs is a waste of my time?" she sounded amused.

"Again, sorry if that sounds impertinent, but the world is teeming with natural intelligences, building AI just seems like reinventing the wheel. Maybe along the way we'll find a tinker that can improve human intelligence, that would be something."

"Armsmaster was right, you do like to tell people how to do their job. And you do seem borderline obsessed with powered armor."

He chuckled. "Maybe I come across that way. But I assure you I'll drop the issue when people start taking it seriously."

"And I understand that your own daughter is getting powered armor."

He tried to shrug but the restraint padding hampered him. "Hopefully she doesn't need to wear it often, I'd like to get her inducted as a thinker that just sits at the headquarters with the analysts and stays out of the line of fire. But if she's going into trouble, I want as much technology and plate metal between her and trouble as possible."

"And yet you express no urge to wear the armor yourself."

"I've seen Armsmaster climbing out of it. It looks uncomfortable. And my powerset keeps me separated from danger by a couple hundred yards. High tech armor is a low priority for me personally, but my teammates are all much more directly involved."

"If you say so. Well, we're landing now, so it's time for us to part ways."

"Already? Dang, you're fast."

"I'm really a very good tinker."

"I know that. Just... think about what I said, okay?"

"Sure thing Druid."

"What?"

"Nothing," she said, and the suit cracked open, the glare of sunlight making him flinch as he was dropped out onto the helipad of the mental hospital. By the time he was upright, she was flying away again.

He stared after the retreating form. "Well that was cryptic," he murmured.

"Are you the Wharf Rat?" called a voice from his right.

"Yeah," Danny said, turning. "I am."

The brown-haired man stepped forward. "Splendid. We've been trying to locate you for a while, this is just such an unusual case. At first you weren't with the Protectorate, so there were security reasons you couldn't visit, and after that you'd been so busy. But now you're here and we can move forward. This way, please, watch your head. Goodness you're tall. Anyway, most of what we run across here is pretty basic. Traumatic stress disorders, dissociative fugue, antisocial personality disorders, an astounding amount of amnesiacs. Intermittent Explosive Disorder, schizotypals, ODD, stuff like that. And the main consideration is the people that have these disorders. The danger they pose, the difficulty of restraining the more unpredictable ones, safety precautions, things like that. But the fascinating cases, the ones we all talk about over the water cooler, are the cases where we have a condition that is itself as unusual as the patient. Where the grounds of parahuman psychology bring us new frontiers as psychologists."

"And he's one of them?" Danny asked.

"He certainly is. Though, he's recovered to a degree. We've got some really cool MRIs to show you if you like."

"Maybe later," Danny said. "Ah, there he is. Shall I just walk right in?"

"We, uh, thought it might be more effective if you don't, actually. Try to recreate the original conditions."

Danny sighed. "Fine." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of walkie-talkies. Four rats came trotting down the hallway towards them, and a nurse screamed and flinched back. He sighed again. "Relax, they're tame, they're responding to my orders," he called out to her.

The doctor shrugged. "You can't really blame her. We've had an infestation for years, can't seem to get rid of them. Hey, do you think you could take them all with you when you leave?"

"Depends on my accommodations," Danny said, bending down to hand off the radio to the rats, and the four of them carried it away. "Get me a helicopter or something that can hold about an extra seven-hundred pounds of rodents, and I'll take them with me. If I can't, I guess I'll just drown them or something, but that seems a huge waste and really inhumane."

"We really appreciate all of this," the doctor said.

"No problem," Danny said, pressing the button on his handset. "Oni Lee, pick up the radio."

The rats watched as the sharp-faced Asian man reached forward and took the walkie-talkie they had set on the shelf at his side.

"You recognize my voice, Oni Lee?"

The man glanced sideways, a sharp single movement of his eyes. And then a small nod.

The doctor could barely restrain his glee. "He does respond to you! It's just like I thought, you transferred Lung's authority to yourself when you took away the phone that had been used to control him before."

"It's about authority," Danny mused, his eyes narrowing as he considered. "He responds to authority." His thumb keyed the radio again. "Oni Lee, these men here work for me. They have their instructions. Your instructions are to cooperate with them. Understood?"

Again the short, tentative nod.

"That should hold him for a while," Danny said. "Would it help you if I came back regularly just to check in?"

"It really would," the doctor said. "Do you mind if I pester you about this case a bit? I want you to have some background if you're going to be helping us treat him. See here? That's his MRIs from when he first arrived. And now that he's been with us a few weeks, here are the slides from each successive week. You see how here he was almost vegetative? And now he's recovering, at a rate so steady it's almost linear. See, the way the brain works is that electrical signals spark and they trigger chemical pathways that carry the signal to other neurons, and so forth. But without input, his mind would sit at rest. Without orders, he has no volition and no executive function at all. But he's recovering, and it's almost like watching a comatose brain waking up in slow degrees, or like an undeveloped brain that is developing sentience and awareness."

"So he's not going to stay like this?"

"He's probably about a third to a fourth cured already, just from sitting around here while we ran our tests. He may speed up now that he'll be cooperating with us. But if my theory holds, he has to not use his powers. The teleportation, it delivers his body intact and his brain is duplicated with all the chemical pathways in place but without the electrical sparks that would make him a whole person. And it takes time to restore those. If he teleported, he would arrive a blank slate like before."

Danny shook his head. "Shit. Still, there's a good chance he could be rehabilitated, and returned to a fairly normal life, right? Maybe something supervised. I've seen him fight; he could be a trainer for the Protectorate."

"Take that up with your director," the doctor said. "For now, we're just trying to turn him into a sentient person again."

* * *

The crowd was moderate, not much more than the usual tour groups for the Protectorate Headquarters plus the local press turnout. But by setting the action on a raised dais in a particular corner, it would look like a bursting wall-to-wall crowd on camera. Tricks like that were particularly important with a live broadcast like this. Dauntless and Armsmaster were the first to speak, using lots of words like "duty" and "responsibility", "safety" and "public service". Wharf Rat stood at the back, where he would be visible to all the cameras and framed in every shot to remind the audience that he was a member in good standing, posed right next to Director Piggot so that the partnership between the Protectorate and the Parahuman Response Taskforce was constantly reinforced.

Under her breath, the Director murmured the words, "Just look at all this Stockholm Syndrome."

Danny froze, and his spine turned to ice. His brain spun through all the implications and insinuations that were tied to those few words. After a few seconds he trusted his voice again, and said, "You've got the Hub bugged."

"We maintain internal security in case of perimeter breaches or medical emergencies," she replied quietly. "But now I know that I need to institute a policy of monitoring communications, because there is a security threat on our team."

"I'm not trying to cause trouble," he murmured back. "I'm only pointing out existing trouble."

"You went behind my back," she hissed.

"I did not," he replied. "I spoke to you first and you didn't listen."

"Later," she swore, stepping forward to the microphone as the two heroes stepped back to bracket the stage. Armsmaster crossed his arms over his chest, Dauntless placed his fists on his hips, both took powerful wide-footed stances like Glenn taught them. Piggot took the microphone to thank everyone for attending, and announced that she was proud to reveal the newest member of the Wards, a warm-hearted young woman who was certain to make them all proud of her: Benthic.

Taylor stepped up, her gleaming armor a deep blue with a visor that was clear on the bottom half of her face and faded to fully reflective at the top. The armor was streamlined and round-edged, with flexible joints and sculpted pods that arched over her shoulders, forearms, thighs, back and collar. She posed for a few seconds with the Director for the cameras, then they traded places so that Benthic could address the public for the first time. "I've been inspired by this city, and by the Protectorate," she said, reading the words that were displayed on the heads-up display on the inside of her visor. "I've always wanted to be a hero, like many other people, but recent events have inspired me to make the step and join now, and do my part with the Wards."

And on that line, the Wards filed in from offstage where they had been waiting behind a curtain. The Director stepped back while the other six teenagers filed in, taking their places. She shook hands with Aegis, the current leader of the Wards team, and paused for camera flashes, and then the team rearranged themselves to stand by order of age. Aegis on one end, then Clockblocker, then Gallant, and Browbeat, and Benthic, and Kid Win, then Vista. Shadow Stalker would have fit between Browbeat and Benthic if she had not been shipped off to a juvenile detention facility with an electrified collar around her throat to keep her from shifting into a shadow to escape. The order of age roughly determined the leadership of the Wards, the eldest was the leader. But that created a system where the leader was always the nearest to graduating out of the Wards and into the Protectorate. It made sure that all of them had some leadership experience by the time they reached the Protectorate, but it meant that the Wards did not have stable command structures.

The Director stepped forward for a couple more shots with the Wards, and she was giving her brief speech to announce that the PRT would be handing out information packets on their new arrival in the next couple of days, and that she would be available for Q&A at future engagements. And that's when the air poofed softly and the Mouse Protector appeared on stage.

"Greetings, Brockton Bay!" she declaimed, planting her feet in a dramatic pose and sweeping her sword out to point to the heavens. She was not hooked into the microphone system but she made that up with volume and drama and projection. "The Mouse Protector has arrived, to begin her epic team-up with your very own Wharf Rat! Truly a partnership for the ages! Villains of Brockton Bay would do well to flee the city now, before the-"

"No questions," Armsmaster said, sweeping her up around the middle and tossing her over his shoulder, carrying her offstage towards the elevators. Director Piggot buried her face in her hands, as if to hide herself from the fact that this just happened. Dauntless gestured with his head and the rest of the heroes piled after the armored tinker and his squirming cargo, heading for the elevators. Four doors opened for them and they packed in while the reporters snapped as many pictures as they could manage.

Danny found himself on an elevator with Dauntless, Aegis and Clockblocker, as they'd been the three he stood closest to on the stage. "So, that was a thing," Clockblocker said, his tone betraying his amusement.

"Mouse Protector isn't necessarily a PR disaster," Dauntless said. "She does keep things interesting. But I'm sure the Director would have liked to have some time to prepare her spin. Which of course is exactly why MP did it this way."

"I'm just glad she didn't fixate on me," Aegis said, glancing at Wharf Rat. "My condolences, sir."

Danny shrugged. "I bet Glenn's pissed. He had big expectations for Benthic's debut, this whole scheme of how it would affect public perception, and now the only thing they'll remember is this."

The doors opened, and they took in the scene. Mouse Protector was on her feet again, talking to Armsmaster as if he didn't loom over her by a foot. "- the grandest tradition of superheroics! Although, I think if we're going to play the tropes straight I'm required to fight him in a ridiculous misunderstanding before we actually team up." She whipped her head around as the elevator doors opened, and her face split in a huge grin. "Hey, partner!" she chirped and bounded over. She bounded well, as if she was on moon-gravity, crossing the space in a blink. She clasped an arm around Danny's back, cupping his shoulder and pulling him into a one-armed side-to-side hug. Her free hand tapped his chest, crossing over his heart in a X shape. "We're gonna have so much fun working together!"

"I thought you worked in Wisconsin," Danny said. The woman's outfit was mostly a suit of armor, with chainmail and some plate pieces at the shoulders and torso that mostly seemed to be for show. Her helmet had large disc-shaped "mouse ears" on the sides, cupped slightly and shaped to make it clear. The face was half-open, with a metal nasal guard that dipped down between her eyes and ended in a steel nose and buck teeth. Her eyes were lively and bright, twinkling with eternal mischief.

"Wisconsin is slow," she said. "I bounce out whenever I need excitement, and I bounce back whenever they miss me there. And when I saw a live broadcast with you, I had to jump on that, you know? I've been doing this hero thing for twenty years. And do you know how long I've been waiting for another rodent-themed hero I could team up with?"

"Twenty years?" he hazarded as a guess.

"Twenty years!" she replied, whirling away dramatically with her arms thrown up in the air. "And I - oh, hey, this is a nice place."

"Thanks," Aegis said. "I don't think most Wards get such a nice arrangement."

She scoffed. "There's a ton of Protectorate offices that aren't this nice. Heck, this is snazzier than what the New York Wards get, but then they seem to take pride in that dump. It's like they've been there since this was just a little project, and they've been so busy they never had time to remodel. Which is bullshit, because I know that their headquarters has been rebuilt from the ground up, twice. You'd think they-"

"So how long are you planning on staying?" Dauntless asked. The rest of the heroes were formed up in a semicircle around her, like an audience at a show.

She considered. "I think a few days should suffice. Maybe less, even. I just need to take down a couple local villains with my new main man here. And of course to have some wacky hijinx. The most interesting relationships are the complicated ones, right? You know? So, like, I'm gonna be all quirky and clingy, and you need to act like you don't even want me around while secretly adoring me."

"I don't think he _does_ want you around," Clockblocker piped up. Danny could _hear_ the smile in the teenager's voice.

"Well, see how perfectly he's suited for the part?" Mouse Protector said, grinning wildly. "We're already in the perfect dynamic!"

Danny spoke up now. "I've got a question for you, if I may. I'm just curious to know, why did you go with Mouse Protector instead of Mouse Guard?"

Her eyes opened hugely, her jaw dropping. "It sounds like 'mouthguard', but it... OMG that's perfect!" she blurted out. "Where were you twenty years ago when I was registering for this outfit?"

"You just said OMG," Danny pointed out. "In real life."

"It's like you _get_ me," she said, teleporting to his side with her arm over his shoulders, draping herself against his side.

"I'm confident in saying that I'm sure _nobody_ gets you," Assault chuckled. His wife whapped him on the shoulder.

"There's a problem with just beating up a couple villains," Miss Militia said. "We've already take care of all the easy ones, and some of the hardest ones. We used to have a bunch of white supremacists, but half of them got arrested and the other half ran to Boston-"

"Could we go to Boston?" the mouse-themed heroine interrupted breathlessly. "I _love_ beating up white supremacists!"

Assault came to the rescue. "I think the whole team-up dynamic is difficult enough without moving into entirely new cities. At least one of you should have their own local fans."

"Right, right, sorry I got carried away just now," Mouse Protector said.

"Just now?" Armsmaster repeated.

Miss Militia ignored the byplay. "And then there was the ABB, but they were the first ones that Wharf Rat took out. The Merchants, ditto. It's pretty slim pickings now."

"Travelers are out," Dauntless pointed out. "Last time Wharf Rat went near them, a precog predicted that he was almost guaranteed to die."

"Undersiders are out," Wharf Rat added. "I promised them I wouldn't go after them. It was part of the deal that took the Merchants out."

Mouse Protector nodded. "I respect that."

"Maybe Faultline and her crew?" Velocity suggested. "But they're mostly quiet these days. And they're mercenaries, so any crimes they do commit are usually someone else's idea anyway. And they've got a Shaker 12, so chasing them into their own lair sounds like an incredibly bad idea."

"And all that's left is the independent villains," Vista said, ticking them off on her hands. "Trainwreck, Circus, ber, and Leet."

"Those last two sound fun," the newcomer said hopefully.

Wharf Rat shrugged. "They kind of are, actually. Video-game themes. But I'm trying to talk them into retiring and going straight, and punching them in the mouth would be counterproductive."

"You're killing my buzz, partner," she said, with a chiding warning tone in her voice. "Okay, that leaves us with only two."

"Circus and Trainwreck," Vista repeated helpfully.

"Right," Mouse Protector nodded towards the girl. "Or is there some family curse that will strike you down if you fight those two?"

"Nah, they're just hard to find and low priorities," Wharf Rat answered.

The out-of-town hero clapped her hands together and rubbed them as if eager for excitement. "Well, if that's what you've got, that's what you've got. Honestly I expected this city to have a higher grade of villain."

"We used to," Dauntless said. "But Wharf Rat here steamrolled them before he even joined the Protectorate."

"Hogging all the fun for yourself," she said, swatting him on the arm playfully.

Benthic just stared, and finally spoke. "You all have to be kidding me."


	10. Chapter 10

"Boring," Mouse Protector declared.

"This is the job," Wharf Rat replied. "If you wanted you could have hung out at the tower and I'd call you when I found something."

She sighed extravagantly. "But then we're not _partners_ , Rat! If I just sit back and wait for you to call, then I'm the sidekick! Or maybe you're the sidekick. But not partners."

"Well, right now I've got a few hundred helpers that are checking the entrances, exits, and chokepoints for the smell of either of our subjects. But I'm not sure I'll get any hits, most of Trainwreck's scent is covered up by grease and soot and heated metal, and most of Circus's scent is covered by greasepaint makeup. So I have to be thorough, and thorough means slow," he said.

"This isn't _slow_ , this is _glacial_!" she protested.

He started the car, and merged it into traffic. His normal ride didn't seat two, so for this journey to take the two of them they had to check a sedan out of the PRT motor pool. He found a gap and swung in, driving carefully for two blocks then pulling over into a parking space.

"Glacial," she repeated while he began mobilizing rats to search this area next. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? To make me so bored I'll leave Brockton Bay."

"This is how the work gets done," he said. "My first villains, I tracked them for about two weeks before I made my move."

"Bullshit."

"Seriously," he asserted. "Two weeks. Why, how do you do this where you come from?"

"I decide to kick butt, I arm up, I teleport to one of the local villains, I harass them until they're so mad they foam at the mouth, I make some jokes and I teleport out," she said. "And I hope that they're not on the toilet when I show up."

He paused, and considered that. "So, you can just teleport to anyone you've ever met?"

"Anyone I've marked," she said, crossing her finger over her heart in a X shape. Just like she had done on him as soon as she met him.

"And any villain you've marked, you can just show up any time you want to fight them again," Wharf Rat said.

She grinned. "Yup. Once I've marked the bad guy, they have to go the rest of their life with that sitting in the back of their minds. Anytime they're making plans, I might show up. When they're briefing their henchmen, I might show up. When they're fast asleep, I might dip their hands in a bucket of warm water. I showed up while someone was having sex, started critiquing them while doing a Marv Alpert impression. I'm a human Sword of Damocles."

"Sword of who?" Danny asked.

"And that's how I can tell that you don't do Rocky Horror shows," she said smoothly. "I don't really _have_ to put people in jail, you see. Just by existing, just by doing what I do, I discourage a generation of kids that might become villains. I keep half of the American Midwest clean and quiet, because anyone who tries to rob a bank or kidnap a homecoming queen just might spend the rest of their life looking over their shoulder to make sure that I'm not going to kick them in the butt, make a speech, sword-fight them until they're either humiliated by losing or until they've _aaaaalmost_ beaten me, then teleport away. Either way, it pisses them off and ruins their whole week. Over and over, year after year. So when some redneck gets stuck in a cow and has a trigger event, he either moves out of my jurisdiction to cause trouble or he keeps his head down and keeps his antisocial personality disorder and death-ray lasers to himself."

"A deterrent," he said.

"Yeah, that," she grinned. "So, I've usually got as much work as I could want, anytime I like. The more I hassle my villains, the fewer villains show up in my area."

He considered that. "So that's what brings you here. Not enough villains to keep you entertained in your backyard."

"That's part of it," she said. "And partly, I've actually eager to have a rodent-style team-up. C'mon, it'll be fun, and it'll give people something to talk about. How often is there news about capes that isn't the latest death toll from an Endbringer attack? And besides," she said, her voice dropping an octave and slowing a bit, sounding more lucid and sincere than anything else she had said, "I've been stuck in a rut. I need to try new things, need to find new ways to work. I have to mix it up or I'm going to get killed or get bored."

"Most people would have escalated from 'bored' to 'killed'," he pointed out.

"Have ya met me?" she replied, her manic grin and tone in place again.

Wharf Rat considered. "I've seen that sometimes you use a shield along with your sword. If I could teleport to anyone I'd marked, I'd make sure to mark all the members of the major teams, and have them give me a call when I was going into battle. Is there a chance you could use a really big shield, big enough to guard you and someone else? So you could watch their back from sneak attacks, or hold a line under a barrage? Or learn some first aid or paramedic skills so you can come to the rescue? You could quickly become the most in-demand member of the Protectorate, if you brought a shield or a bandage in the right place at the right time."

"I was really just looking for ways to mark more people so I could fight more often, not healslut for other people's battles," she said, drily.

"Hear me out. The first several times, or a dozen times, the bad guys are unprepared. They attack, but their attacks are getting intercepted by a giant shield. Any time they start to get the edge, you're there to save someone's life. Eventually, they start to anticipate that you'll be there, and they plan around that, even when you're not there."

"That's not a good thing," she reminded him. "Like, they start packing bigger guns so they can punch through the shield."

He shook his head. "That's not how it works. Bad guys that were going to bring a gun were either going to bring the biggest gun they thought they'd need, or the biggest gun they could get. One or the other. If they need a bigger gun, they're either going to spend more on equipment, which means more investment at the outset and less profit on the job, or they're not going to be able to get a big enough gun, in which case they'll cancel the job. Once they start anticipating you, they're either going to have less incentive to do the job, or they're going to have to quit out. Most villains or gangs can't afford to escalate more than they already have. And soon, fighting the Protectorate means fighting you, every time. And anyone that gets knocked out, or trapped in containment foam, or just distracted too long, gets marked."

Her face split in a wide grin. "That's pretty awesome."

"Thanks. I've become infamous for telling people how to do their job; I think you're the first person to thank me for it." He put the car from park to drive and merged with traffic again, sliding through a light and parking at the end of the second block down.

"As long as you don't try to tell me how to dress, we should be okay," she said, chuckling.

"Hang on a second, we've got a fight on the second floor, that building on the other side of the brownstone," he said, shutting off the car and stepping out. She was out ahead of him, vaulting over a slow-moving group of pedestrians that shouted in startlement and ducked away from the sudden motion. Wharf Rat ran behind her, pulling on his gloves. She got to the door well ahead of him, and she was kicking at the door to break it down when it popped unlocked from the inside. Two rats dropped off the doorknob as she pushed it open, and she paused to give them a salute with her broadsword before she charged for the stairs. She kipped up from landing to landing, and ran up the banister rail the last flight.

She stopped to take the scene in, five or six skinheads surrounding a middle-aged black man, him curled in the fetal position while they kicked him back and forth. "I do love beating up white supremacists," she sighed, then drew her sword with a flourish, the steel ringing cleanly through the sounds of grunts and mutters. "So, what I want to know," she called out in her stage voice, "is are you men? Or are you mice?" The fight stopped, everyone froze, staring. Wharf Rat skidded to a stop beside her, staring down the hallway to the teenagers and the black man. He recognized the tattoos on their arms; these were the dregs of Kaiser's Empire, left behind when the villains searched for safer cities to hide in. He held his hands down at his sides, and two mice in his jacket dropped a pair of lead weights the size and shape of a roll of quarters down his sleeves and into his palms. He rolled them in as he made fists, and readied himself for a brawl.

Four skinheads charged forward, the other two bolted away. "Four men, two mice," she quipped, "like rats from a sinking ship." She leaped up and forward, spinning like a top as she passed over three of their shaven scalps and landed almost on top of the last one, her foot coming heel-first like a poleaxe and knocking him to the ground, either unconscious or so dazed as to make no difference. "And that'll leave a mouse on him!" Rats leaped out of the ceiling towards the two fleeing, driving them back towards the heroes. Wharf Rat stepped forward into a long right cross the used his reach to snap a fist into the first skinhead's face. The teenager tried to bat his arm aside, but the fist had too much momentum and just pushed past the block and knocked the teenager back with a bloody nose. Mouse Protector kicked back against the heel of one of the boys she had vaulted, and his leg went out from under him and dumped him on the back of his head. "Oh, I'm such a shrew!" In the same move she spun up to her feet, lashing out with the flat of her sword to slap it broadside against another punk, dropping him in one blow. "And now I'm just taking the Mickey!"

One of the two boys running down the hall was pinned to the wall by a ring of snapping, chittering rats, but the other one was charging straight for her back. The Wharf Rat snapped his hand out and a small white mouse flung out, soaring like a guided missile into the boy's face. He skidded on his shoes, arms pinwheeling as the mouse bit him on the sensitive septum between his nostrils. The third charging boy was nearly on top of Wharf Rat, arm cocked to punch the tall hero in the belly, when Mouse Protector appeared between them. She caught his arm in one hand and hooked his knee, throwing him to the ground, then leveled her sword on the boy with the mouse on his face. The boy raised his hands in surrender, and the mouse dropped off to land on the blade and scamper back up to her hand, up her arm, and then leap off her shoulder to land back on his jacket and scramble into his pocket with its mate.

The boy at the other end of the hall had his hands up, backed up hard against the wall by the ring of dark-colored rats. "I surrender too!" he cried out. "Call 'em off!"

Ten minutes later they were walking out the door past the cops, her sheathing her sword. "Okay, that was fun. Nice warmup, anyway. But when we left off, you were telling me how to do my job. Now I'm going to tell you how to do yours. Your power makes you an investigator, with access to all these cool senses and sneaky little cheese-eaters. And frankly I can see you spending hours going through newspaper clippings and stuff. But a huge part of these investigations is about finding the fixer and shaking secrets out of 'em. Street stuff, banging doors and getting answers." She slid into the car and buckled up while he started the engine. "Like, you take these guys we're after today. Circus and Trainwreck. You've told me that you barely have any idea what they smell like, but the only plan you've got for finding 'em is to try to sniff 'em out anyway. But my dude, these two are heavy into equipment purchases. One of them is a tinker, and you always find tinkers by tracking their equipment. This guy uses big secondhand machines, rebuilding hoopties into powered armor. So find out who's been stealing hoopties. The other one changes costumes every time she goes out. Seriously, that much fabric comes from somewhere, and she has to have a workshop where she does all that sewing. That and greasepaint, most places that sell that stuff in large quantities are selling to theatres, and maybe they'll remember who uses a personal credit card or cash instead of a business card."

Wharf Rat considered it while one of his minions sorted through a phone book at a booth. "Hmm. Every theatre makeup supply store is in the arts district, we should be able to get through them fast, straight from one to another."

"Now you're talking. Get out there, show your face, work the leads, and use your head. Don't ever let your power make you stupid," she advised him. "I've been at this a long time, and one of the greatest dangers is people letting their powers think for them. You're telling people how to do their jobs because you see it happening to them, but you can still miss seeing it happen to you."

* * *

"So this is the place," Mouse Protector said, climbing out of the car. "See, two days of investigating the right way is less boring than two hours of you using your rats to find nothing at all."

"Maybe," he said. "I don't really get bored much anymore, I've got more sensory input and stimulation than anyone else around, all the time. Here," he said, handing her one of the two bundles he carried.

She took it with a scowl. "See, this is the part of your plan that I like the least. We could still do this my way."

"My city, my villain," he said. "Now, that balcony up there is your mark. Just remember to wait for me."

"Sure, sure," she said, and started bounding up the side of the building. She vaulted from the ground to the car to the fence to the cornice of a window, to a balcony rail and then she scaled from rail to wall to rail and back, until she was in her spot, waiting for him. He walked in through the front door and took the elevator to the fifth floor, unrolling his bundle as he went. At the address, he had a few rodents sniff around. They were able to make out the slight scent of Circus's skin, or what he assumed her skin would smell like without the usual combination of heavy makeup, paraffin and whetstone oil. He knocked on the door, and heard someone inside walk to the door and look through the peephole. And then those footsteps moved fast away from the door towards the open window of the balcony, and more footsteps dropped into place from the balcony above.

And then came the grunts and smacks and thuds of two super-agile combatants fighting. "Shit," Danny muttered. "Shit, she's gone off-script. She's not waiting for me." He ducked low and scooped mice down to the crack under the door, and they squeezed themselves underneath quickly, scrambling up to unlock the deadbolt and unhook the chain. He tried not to fidget anxiously while he waited for them to finish. The mice could vaguely see two figures practically blurring as they punched and kicked their way through the apartment. A massive hammer appeared and disappeared, a sword flashed back and forth. The chain clattered and he burst in through the door.

"Dammit Mouse!" he shouted, his voice clouded by anger. "Stand the hell down!"

Mouse Protector backflipped twice, crouching next to the balcony window, and then reached behind her and pulled out a small white flag on a stick. "Fine," she said, sighing heavily as if badly put-upon. "Fine. Truce. Parlay." She waved the flag half-heartedly. The young man in the room looked from her flag to Wharf Rat's flag, his shoulders tense.

Half the room was scorched, as if a flame had rushed through and left in a hurry. Knives stuck out of everywhere, furniture was smashed. The centerpieces were cut in half, the lighting fixtures were bisected, and loose papers were still burning slowly. Only one table in the corner and its contents were undamaged. The young man was thin and pale, his face oddly smooth and undistinguished, a long oval with very cold eyes and no other expression at all, breathing heavily with a giant mallet in his hands. There were ribbons and jinglebells tied off to the handle of the mallet, brightly colored and jolly. And even staring straight at him, Danny could not tell if Circus was a girl who disguised herself as a man in her secret identity, or a man who cross-dressed in his costume livery.

"Circus, we did not come here intending to fight," he said, keeping his voice level and calm as he addressed the villain. "At least, that was the _plan_ ," he stressed, glaring at Mouse Protector. He lifted the white flag he carried.

"Partner, we may need to discuss your temper," she said, raising an eyebrow.

"I'd like for everyone to stand down, put their weapons away," Wharf Rat said. "We've all got too little to gain and too much to lose, so we should relax and discuss this."

The hammer disappeared before Mouse Protector's sword was sheathed. "Discuss what?" the villain said. Was the voice disguised? An affectation? It was an odd voice, soft and high, but not enough to be sure.

"Amnesty," Wharf Rat said.

The heroine reacted to that. "Whoa there partner, I'm sorry to cut in but you don't have the authority to offer amnesty from either the Protectorate or the law."

"Amnesty from me," Wharf Rat clarified.

"I'm listening," Circus said.

"Two sets of terms. First, is that as long as you do not commit any further crimes with your powers or costume, I will not track you, pursue you, threaten you or interfere with your affairs."

"Hmm," Circus said. The sound gave the impression of a nod without a nod.

"The second may be more of a sticking point, but hear me out. There is something you want. I know there is. You have performed a long series of cat burglaries, netting large amounts of expensive merchandise. You have probably pulled a dozen jobs of arson-for-hire, using your powers to fool arson investigators and insurance investigators. And you were one of Coil's hirelings. We saw his receipts, we know what he was paying you. You have been taking in a huge amount of money, but you don't live lavishly. You need the money for something. It's very possible that whatever it is, I or the Protectorate can help you get it. If you trust me with that information, I'll do what I can to help you, and then you'll never need to do that sort of work again."

Mouse Protector stared at the man with open-mouthed disbelief. Circus looked from the Wharf Rat to the Mouse Protector, and then straightened out of his defensive crouch. He reached for the buttons of his shirt. "It's expensive being me," he said to start.

* * *

"First of all, that was weird," Mouse Protector said, as they drove away. "Second of all, good job now you've made promises you can't keep. And third, seriously someone should talk to you about your temper."

"You almost ruined everything. And almost got killed. Circus is dangerous. Faster than you, better armed than you, more ruthless than you," he said, his voice hard now with emphasis rather than anger. "If he hadn't been trying to protect the costume on the table, you would have died in seconds because you jumped in, or you would have had to teleport away and we'd have had this villain out looking for vengeance instead of looking for solutions."

She sighed. "So, that brings us back to those promises you can't keep."

He chuckled and eased the car out of the parking lot. He still got nervous driving, kept expecting someone to come flying at him from his blind spot and smash them, or the brakes to fail or something. "Can't keep? Are you kidding me? This is probably the only city in America where I could take care of this in a single afternoon. You don't know that much about the capes of Brockton Bay, do you?"

"Apparently not. But my first point still stands: that was hella weird."

"Hella weird," he confirmed.

"How did you find this place?" Mouse Protector asked as they walked up to the three-story house. It wasn't quite a mansion, but clearly whoever lived here was doing very well for themselves.

"It's listed. That's sort of the point," Wharf Rat said, pushing the doorbell.

A minute later, Glory Girl answered the door. "Oh, the Protectorate," she said. "Usually you guys call." A rush of calm and contentment washed out from her.

"Sensitive subject, other people's secrets I've been trusted with," he said. "I'm actually here to see your sister."

The young hero blinked in surprise. "Well, my parents aren't home, so I'll have to ask you not to leave the parlor," she said, opening the door and beckoning them in. She offered them seats but no refreshments, removing the awkward question of how one would drink without removing their masks or helmets. She walked away, leaving them to look around the room for a few minutes. A coffee table, four chairs, an end table with an empty ashtray, and a curio cabinet with a few prints of newspaper clippings about the exploits of the Brockton Bay Brigade or its current incarnation, New Wave. The walls were painted a blend of dark indigo to palest mauve, and somehow looked tastefully done despite that. The furniture was light and airy, and the window brought in a lot of sunlight. It was a comfortable room that still conveyed the character of their family and their team.

Amy walked in, and smiled when she spotted them. "Hello again, Wharf Rat," she said. "I should thank you, I've been meaning to send you a letter or something."

"Panacea," he said, standing. He offered her a hand to shake, and she took it awkwardly. "This is Mouse Protector. Mouse, meet, Panacea."

"Behold! The Mouse Protector has-."

"Ignore her."

"Ignoring her.

"But, but behold..."

"Panacea here," he said to the other heroine, "has the ability to alter the biology or anatomy of anyone she touches. She has traditionally used this for healing, but it's a bit more broad than that."

"Far more broad," Amy said. "But, I'm just now starting to explore that. Do you know what free time is? I never did. From the time my powers became obvious, I've not had a moment of free time. But now I do. And I have you to thank for that, Wharf Rat."

Mouse Protector sat back down. "Oh, and why's that?"

"He got me thinking outside the box. Thinking like a biokinetic and not a healer. Look, I used to put in over a hundred hours a week at the hospitals. Anytime I wasn't eating, sleeping, studying, or helping my sister out of one of her accidents, I was in a clinic or a hospital floor. And the number one thing was cancer. Brain cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer, leukemia, melanoma, on and on and on. It's widespread, it's lethal, and it gives more advance notice than stroke or heart disease. And, because it's so invasive and tenacious, it takes a while for me to cure it. Especially since the doctors would only let me work on cases they had completely given up on. It was ruining my life, and I was just so, so tired of it. And then this guy, casually in conversation, asks me why I don't just custom-build a virus to kill the cancer."

"Seriously?" Mouse Protector asked, turning from one to the other.

"Yeah," Amy Dallon said. "You know it would take most tinkers years to come up with a custom virus that could do that. Human science probably won't figure it out in fifty years. I took my time, made sure it was stable, made sure it wouldn't attack anything except cancer, wouldn't mutate or transfer to a different host. I took my time, carefully and thoroughly. It took me a weekend. There is now a ward in the Central Hospital where cancer patients check in for a week, hang out with the other patients, catch a cold, and get their cancer cured. It's lovely. Children and adults, the elderly, all in there together. All thinking they were going to die, but now they are going to live. All of them with the same cough, fever, and sniffles. Do you know what they call themselves? The Sneeze Guards. It's adorable. It gave me my life back, and all of them too. Now I visit the hospital once a week to deal with transplants, strokes, infections, and things like that. I'm still saving literally hundreds of lives a week, but now I have time for myself. I might even get a boyfriend."

Nobody could see if Wharf Protector was smiling, but his voice sounded like he was. "That is tremendous, Amy, I'm thrilled to hear that it worked so well. You would have thought of it yourself if you'd had five minutes to think clearly about it without any pressure. I kind of want to give you a hug."

"I kind of want to hug you back," the girl laughed. She stood, awkwardly as if conflicted, and he swept her up in a big bear hug that lifted her off the ground and gave her a fatherly squeeze. She put her arms around him and hugged the man that had changed her life. Then he set her down and they stepped back, and Amy was still smiling. "Okay, so what brings you here today?"

"Need a favor," Mouse Protector said.

"We're testing a theory," Wharf Rat followed up. "The best way to beat a supervillain is to make them not want to be a supervillain anymore."

She froze. "I can't do anything with people's minds. I just can't."

He nodded. "Yeah, I figured that was probably the case. Fortunately that's not what I meant. We've got a case, and let's say the patient was engaging in criminal activities just to afford some extremely specific, extremely expert surgery. The patient is convinced they absolutely need this surgery, and I'm in no position to say otherwise. But it's going to cost millions. Or, about half an hour's attention from you."

Amy sat back, toying with her long brown hair as she thought. "Beating a supervillain without fighting them. It sounds like it's perfect, too perfect. Nothing works that well. But I'm ready to try. And what's more, I'm going to say this is not a favor to you, but maybe even a favor from you to me."

"I don't follow," Danny said.

"Look, in the past year my folks and my family have fought against Lung three different times, and different members of the Empire four times. And each time the fight was inconclusive or too dangerous to continue. My sister and the Wards have fought against the Travelers and the Undersiders twice each this last year. And each time the villains escaped. But if I can take someone out of circulation? I'll be the big success story. This will be my year. I won't be the noncombatant that hangs out at the clinic while everyone does the important work of making the city safe."

"I didn't realize it was that bad," he said. "I'm sorry that you have to resent them for that."

"Eh, it's not really as bad as that," she said. "I overstate a bit. But the core idea is sound: I would prove myself to them in a way I never have before. Take me to my patient."

* * *

Circus met them at the apartment, which was already halfway to being fixed up. The scorch marks were still clinging stubbornly, and the dining table had been converted to a coffee table by sawing off the legs, and the broken chairs were missing. The oval-faced androgyne looked them over, eyes cold and reptilian.

"Panacea, meet Circus. Circus, this is Panacea. She will be your doctor."

"Hero, not a doctor," Circus said. "No Hippocratic oath."

The girl pulled herself straight. "No, I'm not accredited. But I've saved hundreds of people every week since I was thirteen. There aren't many doctors that have done as much as I have. Any ethical or professional standards that a doctor maintains, I have far exceeded. I have lived a Hippocratic oath for four years now. And I'm the best chance you've got."

"And besides," Wharf Rat said. "If she double-crosses you, nobody is going to trust this arrangement ever again. Whether she plays straight or double-crosses you, I get what I want from you, but I'm a big-picture thinker. I don't take out a villain, I take out gangs. All three ABB villains at once, both Merchant villains at once, three Empire villains at once. It makes sense for me to make sure you can trust me on this."

Circus nodded, and stepped aside to let them all enter. Panacea directed the gender-fluid villain to the couch, relaxing back. "No, don't strip, I can do this with nothing but a touch of my hand to yours," she said. "Now, describe to me exactly, exactly what you want."

Five minutes later they were holding hands, and Circus was drifting off to sleep. "Converted a few spare red blood cells into a dose of anesthetic," she said. "Just so you know, I can do this. Or I can lock Circus into a vegetative state forever. I don't need to kill, and they'll never feel pain again. I want you to know that we've got this option."

"Noted," Wharf Rat said, "but we'll stick with Plan A." Mouse Protector looked thoughtful though, as if tempted by the alternate plan.

A half hour later Circus was changed, and waking up. The superpowered assassin did not crack a smile or express thanks, but only looked at Wharf Rat and said, "There was one more thing."

"And we'll be back when we've got it," Wharf Rat said. "Panacea, thank you for your help, you were tremendous."

"No, thank you," she said, heading for the door. "I still say this is two favors I owe you."

They were walking out to the car, when Mouse Protector coughed awkwardly. "Hey, uh, Panacea, you're a hell of a healer, in addition to these other talents. And I was wondering if it was okay for me to mark you. If I do that, I can teleport to you from wherever. Maybe you could call me and I could come to help you with something. Or maybe I would drop in front of you, bleeding out, without warning. You know."

Panacea chuckled. "I really, really hope you don't just teleport in on me on the brink of death, but in your line of work, that's more a 'when' than an 'if'. Yeah, do the thing, we'll settle accounts later."

* * *

After they had dropped the girl off back at her house, they turned to the west side of downtown. The address took a bit of finding, the building was entirely unremarkable.

"Hello?" said the short young woman. She had a Middle-Eastern cast to her features, and long black hair.

"Yes, we're looking for a parahuman named Parian," Wharf Rat said.

She went defensive, seeming to shrink back on herself without overtly moving. "Why?"

"We need an outfit designed," he said. "Or, rather a couple dozen outfits."

She arched an eyebrow. "No fighting? Nobody gets hurt? You just need a superpowered fashion student?"

Wharf Rat glanced over at Mouse Protector. "I didn't know you actually studied fashion. That actually makes this a lot easier."

She waved them in. "I've never heard of the Protectorate getting involved in anything that didn't involve violence somehow. Is this outfit going to be used to strangle someone? Or do you think I can make powered armor or something?"

"Nothing like that," Wharf Rat said. "Circus just needs a dozen outfits, reversible, mix-and-match parts, so she can pick whatever look she wants. She's not good enough to make them herself, but you are."

She took a startled step back. "Circus the villain? What are you doing getting costumes for her? And what am I getting out of this?" she asked, suddenly suspicious. Her eyes narrowed and she subconsciously took another step to the side to put her back to the doorway. The apartment was clearly that of a fashion student, covered in swatches and sketches and bins full of supplies and fabrics. And a lot of those fabrics started to rustle, almost subtly, as if she was ready to defend herself from trouble using what was at hand.

"We're getting costumes for Circus because one of the reasons she steals and kills is so she can afford the perfect costume. If she gets her costume, she doesn't need to do that anymore. And we'll be paying you fair market value," Wharf Rat said. He noticed her costume draped over a chair, an outfit and wig and mask that were modeled on a traditional doll, a curly-haired moppet with petticoats. The kind that people make horror movies about. He did not shudder, but he did turn himself so as not to see it anymore.

"What?" Mouse Protector blurted. "You can't-"

"The Protectorate pays well, and I don't have many expenses," he said. "So I'll be paying you out of pocket."

Sabah blinked at them, and the room settled around them. "Let's talk turkey," she said, pulling out a chair.

* * *

"Now, Trainwreck is never seen out of his power armor," Danny said as he into the car. "So that means one of two things. Either A: he literally never leaves those things, which his personal hygiene would support, or B: he's just so hard to recognize out of the armor that he could be nearly anywhere. I think we should start with the assumption that A is true, because B would mean that we have next to no chance at all to find the man at all."

Mouse Protector climbed into the passenger seat, and buckled up. "Optimistic, but otherwise sound reasoning. If the options are to try to fix something or give up entirely, one should probably at least give it a shot."

"So that means that we're looking for a powered-armor tinker that is not going to be maintaining any sort of legitimacy. No house papers, no bank account. That means no access to buying his supplies legitimately. And from there, we can conclude that he steals his materials. Large volumes of metal and moving parts. Often rusty, battered or visibly repaired. He goes through a fairly high quantity of it, because he changes his look pretty often. Sometimes just one limb at a time, sometimes a full overhaul. So he's probably stealing cars, lots of them, but sticking with the ones that are least likely to be missed, older or abandoned." He started the car and put it in gear.

"Right, he steals a lot of hoopties," she said with a nod. "I think we covered this."

"Thinking out loud," he said, shooting her a look. "So, junkyards? Scrapyards? Impound lots? Long term parking? Black-market vendors that can't report the losses?"

She shook her head. "Nope. If it was a junkyard, there'd be some sort of police report for it. Maybe he can steal a car that nobody cares about, but he can't do it without knocking down their fences or causing other damage. I already checked, nothing like that being reported. Impound lots or long-term parking have guards and we haven't heard anything about that. We could start checking shady car dealers that don't have paperwork for their merchandise, but that sort of theft gets you shot at, and the reports of gunfire don't make a pattern that matches that. So some of our starting assumptions are wrong. Humor me real quick, drive me around to the nearest trailer park."

"What?"

"Drive me to the white-trash-est, redneckest, mullet-wearing-est trailer park you've got," Mouse Protector said. "I want to test out a theory."

He shrugged, and waited for the flow of traffic to ease before he pulled out of the parking lot. "I really don't have that bad a temper," he said. "I don't blow up a lot. I saw that you could have gotten very seriously hurt back at Circus's place, and it just got me really freaked out."

"Do you usually freak out by yelling at people and shaking your fists?"

"Everyone freaks out differently," he said, trying to keep his voice calm and easy and not defensive. "Look, I only really lose control like that when someone's going to get hurt. I don't want anyone getting hurt. I get protective. That's a good thing, right? It's not like I'm a mean drunk or start fights when I get insulted."

"Oh, I know," she said. "I test everyone's patience, and you've been one of the most easygoing folks I've ever worked with. But when you do go off, you go straight past "annoyed", past "ticked off", past "angry", and you stop one step shy of "immediate violence". Now, I'm grateful that you stop that one step short, but that's not really a normal reaction. You've got a ton of stuff bottled up, and you keep that lid on until you can't control it anymore. You know that the Protectorate has psychologists on staff, right? You can get some talk therapy, complete confidentiality; maybe even prescribe you some medications. It's possible you've got a chemical imbalance that makes you rage out like that."

"I don't 'rage out'," he scoffed.

"You mutilated and humiliated Lung," she said gently. "Then you dropped a building on him. You hit the Merchants with a landmine. A frickin' landmine, Wharf. Neither of them has invulnerability, and you hit them with a landmine and exploded their car, and nearly killed Skidmark with a cinder block dropped off a roof. That's not normal, Wharf. Most people back off of a fight if the only way they can win it is like that. You don't back down. You need to learn how to de-escalate. You beat Shadow Stalker to a pulp and left her for dead on a rooftop. Your people dragged Night behind a truck. Othala and Rune are probably still in a hospital. You nearly got Trickster with another landmine. I legitimately don't know how you haven't killed anyone yet, and I think it's only because you're lucky."

"It's not as bad as you make it sound," he replied.

"What part of it was wrong then?" she shot back.

He was silent for a few blocks as they drove. "I didn't leave Shadow Stalker for dead, I called an ambulance for her."

"And then you walked away before you could be sure she was going to survive," she pointed out. "You're a pretty hard man, whether you admit it to yourself or not. There's a lot of coldness in you, along with all that anger."

He half-turned to see her in his peripheral vision without taking his eyes off the road. "Did someone put you up to this? Did the Director ask you to talk about this with me?"

"She should've," Mouse Protector grumbled. "But no, most of this is just off the cuff. I started reading up on you before I showed up, I've legit been waiting for a chance to do a team-up. A lot of those things I read about seemed a bit extreme, but I was not really seeing the pattern until I saw you fighting the skinheads. I watch a lot of people fight, and my specialty is making them fight angry. I find psychotic criminals and I goad them to extreme measures to get them to fight angry. You get there from a standing start, Wharf. If that one skinhead had even tried to fight smart at all he would have pummeled you. Fortunately, non-capes tend to fight stupid when they see the mask. I think that's what saved you back there. And then in Circus' apartment, I saw it again, how fast that anger can turn on someone you're working with. I think anyone that fights at your side is going to see that, not just me."

He sighed, and considered for a minute. "I'll talk to someone. But I'm going to be damned careful about it. I've got a director with a grudge against me, and she has our entire Tower bugged."

"Why does she have a grudge against you?" Mouse Protector asked.

Danny thought about slamming down the phone and then trying to rally the other heroes against the PRT, how he had stomped and snarled. "It's not important."

"Uh huh. Look, armchair diagnosis time: I think you mentally separate the world into two groups: people you need to protect, and enemies. Don't treat people like enemies if you don't want them to act like your enemy."

He spun the wheel as they made a gentle turn. "And yet here we are, making arrangements and brokering deals to reform these supervillains."

"Okay, it's not a perfect theory," she admitted. "Holy crap this is a trailer park to beat all trailer parks! I think this place has an illegal taxidermy market. I can smell the inbreeding from here. And that over there? That's a dog fighting ring. Right out in the open. This is the birthplace of mullets, my man."

He chuckled. "So, we're here. What's your theory?"

"My theory is that there should be at least two dozen cars up on blocks here," she said, opening her car door. "But somehow there's not a single one."

Wharf Rat stared around, and saw what she saw. "Damn," he said. The place was lousy with rats, he was able to mobilize them in seconds. The grass was saturated in motor oil in several places, brake fluid, rust. But none of it was sunk in deep into the ground. When cars broke down around here, they either got fixed or got removed.

"Excuse me there! Sir!" Mouse Protector cried out, with the lilted tones of her stage voice. "Stop there!" she yelled, and then took off at a run, leaping over a Big Wheel tricycle with a forward flip, and then over a laundry line with a high round-off. The man ran with a rare determination, legs and arms pistoning and he didn't even look over his shoulder. It was like he watched COPS and critiqued the criminals what they were doing wrong, making notes for a day like this.

Danny sighed and had a couple dozen rats sweep in front of the man, leaping up to startle him. The man stopped too suddenly, his feet going out from under him, and he dropped on his butt in the grass. Mouse Protector stood over him, and Danny approached at an easy amble. The rats could smell industrial quantities of ether and methamphetamines on the redneck. He was wearing jeans and a wifebeater shirt, but the man looked like a polo shirt he was wearing would still be a wifebeater shirt.

"Ease up, man," Danny said, reaching down to give the man a hand up. "We literally don't care, we're after supervillains today. Just tell us who takes the cars away when they break down."

"City sends a guy," the meth-chef said, looking them over warily. "He shows up in a tow truck, stamps a notice on the door, hooks up the car and hauls it off. Says the city's got a rule about abandoned cars or broken-down cars, so they haul it off to the junkyard. Doesn't pay nothing for 'em, just seizes 'em and drives off."

"What does the notice say?" Wharf Rat asked.

"Shit man, I dunno. Who reads that stuff?"

Mouse Protector grinned. "So, somewhere around here is someone that never throws anything away. Where is she?"

"How'd you know that?"

Mouse Protector looked around the blatantly obvious stereotype that surrounded them, then returned her gaze to the man. "Maybe I'm psychic."

* * *

"Okay, so a description of the tow truck, and a copy of the notice," Danny said. "Not bad. I mean, I'm disgusted that this worked, but not bad."

"Don't tell anyone I'm teaching you all my tricks," Mouse Protector quipped.

He chuckled. "Let's get back to the tower, we can make more of this from there."

Once they were back on the highway, he started speaking again. "So, I'm sort of wondering how it is that you lecture me about my methods being too harsh when you carry a sword everywhere."

"Oh, this?" She said, unsheathing it in the narrow confines of the passenger seat and somehow making it look easy and graceful. "It looks like just one weapon, doesn't it?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"Check it out," she said, turning it this way and that. "The tip of the point here, chisel-cut for penetration on high-density materials. I use it for robots, constructs, things like that. Sometimes I stab out a lock with this thing, smashing the mechanism so I can get through a door. It's not really appropriate for power armor, because it will either not penetrate and will be useless, or it will penetrate and I'm almost certain to maim or kill someone. So, this edge of the blade here, razor sharp with very very small serrations, you see 'em? Perfect for cutting ropes, cloth, similar materials. The other edge looks sharp, but if you look you'll see it's rounded off a good bit. Swung hard at the right spot, it'll strike hard enough to break bones, good for regenerators that need to be slowed down a bit. But if you pull back a bit or hit a softer target, it'll just leave a hell of a bruise. The flat of the blade will leave a good bruise, but distributes the force a little broader so it's safe to land a headshot most times. The handguard here is just what it looks like, basically a set of brass knuckles. This pommel here? The gaudy little stone? It's plastic, it covers a needle and a dose of fast-acting paralytic. Good for a knockout shot when you need someone unharmed. By my count, that's six weapons, that let me pick the exact level of violence appropriate to any situation."

"Damn," he said, impressed.

She preened a little. "Well, I've been doing this a long time. You work up some tricks after a while."

"I could try modifying my hologram landmines for containment foam instead of antipersonnel charges," he conceded. "But I'll need help from our tinkers, and we're still not 100% sure what bombs Bakuda boobytrapped and which ones she didn't. It's hard to modify them without worrying about blowing up the whole building."

"It's a start," she said. "But you shouldn't drag people behind trucks."

"White supremacist," he reminded her.

She sighed. "You shouldn't drag people, even racists, behind trucks. Honestly, you should make containment-foam grenades a big part of your arsenal. Your rats can carry them and pull the pins, so you can bring that in on people's blind spots to trap them instantly. You can maneuver them anywhere you want, silently and efficiently. Surely that's easier than actually carrying landmines around?"

"It's worth a shot," he said. "They are a bit limited. They don't shut off anyone's powers, just immobilizes a couple of limbs, so it only really takes some people out of the fight. And they're a little slow to expand, I need to get the drop on them in a big way."

"Surround someone with three grenades and pop them at the same time, one of them will get him," she said. "And it reduces someone's overall threat level. They can't escape or pursue, you can call in reinforcements if you need to. And anyone tough enough to ignore containment foam is too tough for your rats to hurt on their own anyway."

"I'm trying not to rely too much on tools," he admitted ruefully. "My first few times out I was carrying a crowbar, duct tape, things like that. But now that I'm on a team with a tinker, it's too easy to solve every problem by just saying 'have someone else build a machine to fix it'. It's kind of like what you were saying about how we get stuck in our own ways of thinking and we start getting stupid. If I just grab a bunch of weapons, I'll start thinking the answer to my problems is to use those weapons. And now Armsmaster is making me a suit of powered armor, and dozens of remote-controlled drones with onboard weapons, and it feels like a lot of what I'm going to bring into the fight is going to be from him, not me."

"Figure out how to make it your own," she said. "Powers give you opportunities, watch for those opportunities. Keep asking for outside opinions, keep consulting other people for their observations, ask people to tell you how to do your job."

He blew a slow breath out. "Okay, that really turns a lot of things around for me. And it does sound like damned good advice."

"Yeah," she said, buffing her fingernails on her chainmail and admiring her reflection in them. "I'm pretty awesome."

"Wanna catch a wanted murderer?" he asked, pulling over.

She grinned widely. "Do I!" she drew the sword and leaped out of the car, following his lead.

* * *

"So, Wharf Rat," Director Piggot said as she approached. "I did not realize that the Protectorate was operating a catch-and-release program with supervillains."

Danny finished signing off on the return of the car to the motor pool and handed the clipboard back to the clerk. "That's a pretty one-sided assessment of what we did."

"You used your personal funds to buy material from an unaligned rogue parahuman on behalf of a villain wanted for murder," she replied. "If there's another side to this assessment, I'd like to see you sell me on it."

He paused in place to gather his thoughts, unaware that he was just looming silently over the woman with his inscrutable mask staring straight at her. "Okay, it's like this," he said. "Villains tend to be folks that want a lot of money. Some of them just because it's money, others need it for a purpose. Like Circus, she was looking for something specific and expensive. By brokering a deal to get her what she wants, we remove the impetus behind her crimes. Now mind you, Circus is still a dead-eyed sociopath, and nothing I've done will change that. But she had been a sociopath with a reason to kill and steal, and now she's not."

"And justice for all her previous crimes? We just make a mockery of the due process and the concept of accountability?"

"Not at all," he said. "I didn't give her amnesty from the police or the Protectorate, I just told her that I personally would not pursue her. I didn't make promises on anyone's behalf but my own."

"You work for me, and you pursue who I tell you to pursue," she said, her angry eyes narrowing.

He sighed. "That's a larger issue, and one that deserves its own conversation. But I've got two major points to bring up in defense of my actions. First, I now have an informant on criminal activities in this city that I didn't have before. Nothing was discussed in open terms, but the deal that we made was so lopsided that she has to know she's in my debt. Secondly, there's the public-relations angle of this."

"The public-relations angle is what I'm worried about," Piggot barked at him. "What am I going to say when people ask me why my newest Protector, formerly a rogue vigilante, is now making back-room deals with known villains on his own terms? How do I sell that to the public?"

He held up his hands, palm out. "Okay, maybe the word I'm looking for isn't public relations, exactly. Street credibility? Black market gossip? I dunno. But hear me out. I'm the guy that all the villains in the city know as the guy that wiped out half their number. I'm the boogeyman that took down four factions of villains, the guy that walked casually into an ambush outnumbered twenty-to-one and walked back out in a show of strength. I'm the reason they check their locks and sleep with one eye open. And if it gets around that I'm cutting deals, offering a truce, they'll be interested in that. They might mistrust it at first, but they trust each other more than they trust me. I might be able to get them to approach me to discuss terms, people that I couldn't catch or couldn't fight might be convinced to stand down peacefully. And then new villains, up and coming, might look at this. Someone who's desperate last week might have only seen crime as a way out. But next week he might see two ways out: crime, or talking to the Wharf Rat."

"Don't talk about yourself in the third person," Mouse Protector nudged him. "Seriously, not even I do that."

"It was just that context," he replied.

"No bantering," Piggot said, glaring. "I'm not happy with this. You need to clear these things with me first. I want villains put on trial in front of a judge, not kid-gloved and bribed into behaving themselves. That's not the Protectorate, that's not the PRT, and you are not bigger than those organizations, Rat. Clear it with me first."

"But," he said, his voice soft, "what if I don't?" He kept his tone reasonable, as if just asking a question for the sake of curiosity. "I know that the other heroes all do exactly what you say, but nothing I signed gave you sole executive discretion over my words and actions. I didn't actually sign away my right to personal independence. We've got a working relationship, and you've got more authority over me than I do over you, certainly. But if I don't play ball? Do you dock my pay? Written reprimands? Do I work the overnight shift for a month? Certainly there's a precedent, you can give me some perspective."

Mouse Protector was furiously mugging at him to stop, miming a cut throat and zipped lips. Piggot was already glaring at him, so her reaction didn't change. "You don't challenge me, mister," she said. "You have no idea the leverage that I have over you. I can make your life suck exactly as much as I want it to suck, and there is nothing at all you can do about it."

Danny took a calming breath. It was easier to argue with her in person than over the phone, he was realizing. It was easy to read her and see exactly what was going to drive her to make mistakes, push her to say things she wouldn't normally say out loud. "Madame Director, that comment made it sound like you are threatening me with some very belowboard revenge if I don't stay aboveboard enough for you. It sort of compromises your moral authority when you tell me you're willing to break the law because I bend it. And without moral authority, this isn't about the Protectorate or the PRT, it's about a personality conflict between yourself and myself."

Piggot looked from Wharf Rat, to the motor pool clerk who was almost out of earshot as he worked busily on this clipboard, to the Mouse Protector, back to Wharf Rat. "Submit your plans and suggestions to my office, and I will give them my attention. Don't go around me on this," she said, and turned to stomp away.

Wharf Rat leaned towards Mouse Protector. "If I die in a terrible accident that is completely impossible to link to that woman, I want you to cry at my funeral. Maybe throw yourself on my coffin."

"I'll scream about how the good ones always die so young," she promised him. "By the way, out of the blue, I just now realized why your director has a grudge against you."

He chuckled. "That? That's not the reason. I've been poking at her every day since I got here. C'mon, let's get some information on this tow truck and this notice that they leave behind when they steal broken cars."

She walked beside him, keeping up with his long strides. "And what your director just said? Like, she _just_ said?"

"I'll cope," he said easily. "C'mon, let's get lunch."

"I think I'll pass," Mouse Protector said. "I'm starting to think I'm a bad influence on you. Look, stay out of trouble. I'll be back sometime. Probably when it's really inconvenient for you. This won't be our last team-up, count on it. And when I come back, I expect you to be less angry. And I want you to stay smart, keep thinking, find opportunities and don't get stuck solving all your problems the same way. Okay? And stay out of your director's way, don't make her follow through on whatever that threat was. I don't want to have to throw myself on your coffin for a while."

* * *

"Okay, you're acting weird," Taylor said as they stepped off the bus.

"What, it's a nice little park," Danny said with a small smile.

She shrugged. "Granted, it is a nice little park," she said. "But it's not a reason to delay getting lunch, unless you're stalling."

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. It felt weird to not be wearing his long trenchcoat. "Look, after the stuff between me and the Director, I could use some time away from that place. Everything bugged, everything reported, it's just creepy. And maybe also I've got another agenda," he admitted.

"Uh huh," she said, trailing it out expectantly.

He led the way, walking west. "Well, right now I've got just a bit of Wharf Rat business that can't have anything to do with the Protectorate," he said. He paused by the garbage can at the edge of the park, and picked up a few bottles that had missed the mark.

Taylor sighed. "I should have known something like that was going on."

He chuckled. "You're a smart girl. You probably should have known." He took a folded paper note and tucked it into an empty, dry plastic bottle, and sealed it shut, then casually dropped it down the nearest storm drain. "C'mon, let's walk to our restaurant from her. Only, maybe just a bit to the north for part of the way."

The teenager rolled her eyes. "God, dad, what are you up to? Why the skullduggery?"

"I'll tell you what's up with the skullduggery if you tell me what's up with the vocabulary?"

She made a face. "My new gimmick is to be an aquatic hero. So Armsmaster has assigned me some reading to make sure that I can do the job, and more reading to make sure I can fool people into thinking I designed the armor myself. And that winds up including a lot of nautical terminology, so a dictionary of nautical terms was included, which all sounds really pirate-y. So, your turn, spill."

He didn't meet her eyes. "Okay, so the Director basically forbade me from negotiating with any more villains. But, you know, I've got a good lead and I just want to finish what I started.."

"You're obstinate and contrary," Taylor corrected, "and you're thumbing your nose at her to prove you can."

"I'm right, she's wrong, and everyone knows it," he said, with a rush of heat to his voice. "I know I'm right, she knows I'm right, but she just needs to stamp down any idea that wasn't her idea so she can prove she's got power over us. She's a control freak that wants unquestioned authority over every detail of our lives. And until I kneel and kiss her ring, she's going to keep grinding at me. But this is important, life-and-death important, and I can't wait patiently for an insecure despot to get over her own ego and get out of my way."

Taylor walked in silence for a minute. "So, tell me about Trainwreck."

"The guy has an accomplice, an independent gypsy tow truck driver," Danny started.

"You can't call them gypsies, it's racist," Taylor said.

"Even if the guy is an ethnic Romani?"

"Seriously?"

"Anyway, the accomplice travels to poor neighborhoods, posts a bogus notice that the city is seizing the car, and he drives away with it. Nobody argues against it, and nobody bothers reading up on the laws to find out that it's not legitimate. He's stealing cars and the victims don't even know they're being robbed," Danny said. "And he brings them back to Trainwreck, who turns them into armor plating and servos and stuff like that. So I'm taking a message to the truck driver, for him to pass on to Trainwreck. And then hopefully the tinker replies and I learn what he needs to stop being a villain, and we make those arrangements."

"Good luck," Taylor said. "So that's why you invited me out to lunch."

"No, it's just why I chose this place," he said. "I've been tied up with the Mouse Protector for the past few days, and I haven't had a chance to talk with you since you joined the Wards. What's it like, being Benthic?"

"Well, for one thing Glenn is just as bad as you led me to believe," she said. "My armor is literally built to keep my posture good. Any time I'm not swimming or walking, the joints slide into a locking mechanism that keeps my back straight, shoulders back, chin up. Oh, and the voice modulator makes me more polite. If it hears me call someone sir or ma'am, it starts automatically adding that to the end of my sentences if I don't say it myself from that point on, so it can keep me respectful of my elders even if I forget or don't care. What the shit is that, really?" She stomped her foot in frustration. "And he wanted all the armor panels between my ribs and my hips to be transparent, said I have a nice midriff and it was potentially an asset to the Protectorate. I filed a report for sexual harassment, and he dropped the issue."

Danny stopped. "We have to go back, sorry. I need to kick Glenn Chambers around like a soccer ball."

"Funny," she drawled, tugging his arm to get him walking again. "So, the work itself is actually a lot of fun. I did a few laps around the bay, mostly for some publicity pieces, and I love it. I'm going to start campaigning to keep me out in the water. I can argue that it's to catch smugglers. I can argue that I'm doing research on marine life. It's just really cool down there. Color-corrected night vision, infinite rebreather, pressure-resistant armor with a force field array to assist, seriously it's the best way to explore underwater. And, may I say, I was entirely right about Dauntless's power."

He grinned over at her. "I'm not surprised, but I'm still glad to hear it."

"Not only can he charge his power's energy into items other than his spear, sandals, shield and helmet, but it's more effective if he does," she said, sounding very proud of herself. "I mean, the cumulative effects of focusing his power are really impressive, but if he takes off a few days here and there he can do a lot of good. So I've got a ring with a lightning shock, and in the armor I just fire it off continuously to charge the capacitors that run the armor. It acts like an infinite power source or a never-ending battery, for almost no space at all. It turns out that when you're designing powered armor, one of the most important things is mass and space. Anything you can do to conserve space or weight can be used to build up other systems. And the propulsion system gets a boost from Dauntless's power again, a small chain with a boost like his sandals. Not enough for me to actually fly and get up off the ground, but enough to push against water and increase my speed. Or, if I leave the armor off and move carefully, I can kind of walk on water. Anyway, the other ring gives me a force field. Again, a small one, but better than nothing and I can restore it instantly if it gets knocked down so it's a little protection from every attack. The armor's got some cool on-board weapons, like a rapid-fire containment-foam mini-grenade launcher and a sonic attack. So that's cool."

"And the other Wards?"

"Have all been way too busy to even look at me," she said. She sounded a little disappointed by that. "It's almost finals week, so we're all working our butts off for school. No patrols and no missions this week for us, your team is covering all that stuff. We make it up in the first couple weeks of summer, we go full-time hero while the grownups enjoy summer vacation."

"But school has been okay?" he prompted.

"School's been very okay," she replied, breaking into a new smile. "Thanks."

"If anything else goes wrong, I want to be the first to know," he said. "Even if I can't help, even if I'd just get in the way. Please Taylor, do that for me."

She leaned over to give him half a hug. "Fine, yes, okay. So, have you heard from the Dockworkers recently?"

He chuckled. "I have, yeah. They tell me that there's good work, and that the people I hired are working out well. And that people miss me, and still root for me. And they don't say anything about the other stuff, but it still bothers me. I was doing all of this to try to get the ferry going. That was what my original goal was. I figured this would all be worth it if I got the ferry running. But now I find out that I'm farther from that than ever before, with bigger obstacles than before. The director is shooting down any suggestion I've got that might actually help people in a long-term way. Apparently we, the Protectorate, are extremely indebted and beholden to the establishment of the city. The wealthy, the powerful. The ones that want to stay wealthy and powerful and want everyone else to be poor and desperate so they're easier to exploit."

"Easy," she cautioned.

"I'm taking it easy. So power calls to power, and now that I'm an equal partner in the organization that can move mountains, I'm forbidden to even write letters or emails on the subject. And the Boat Graveyard, and the enforcers on the Boardwalk, and the mayor's crooked real estate deals, and the crappy state of every high school that isn't Arcadia." He sighed, and his shoulders sagged, his chin dipped, and for a second he actually showed the weight that he felt on himself all the time. "This wasn't supposed to be easy, but it was supposed to be possible. I'm hitting too many dead ends, too many roadblocks."

"Let's eat, and discuss this later," she suggested.

* * *

 _Author's note: Canonically Circus was referred to as gender-fluid. This has been reinterpreted slightly for purposes of this story. This is not intended as any sort of slight or disrespect or exclusion of any gender identity._

 _Also: I am genuinely disappointed that some of the theories coming up in the reviews are better than what I've already got written out for the story. On the other hand, I'm also surprised at how some of the theories are foreshadowing what is going to be happening in another ten-to-twenty chapters. But in the interests of fairness, I won't say which ones are eerily spot on with my outline, and which ones are directions I kind of wish that I'd gone._


	11. Chapter 11

"We've got a problem," Dauntless said.

"Just one?" Miss Militia asked, shooting a look over at Wharf Rat.

"Uncalled for," the skinny new hero protested.

"A different problem," Dauntless clarified. "It's Faultline and her crew. This afternoon Faultline came with a disguise on, and took the tour of the premises. Just the public areas, but she was taking pictures." The display behind him showed a series of stills from the security cameras in the lobby, focused on one brown-haired woman with a sun hat on and sunglasses. "Based on the angles and layout, it looks like she was mapping out the structural supports and load-bearing pillars. As you all know, her power is the ability to cut through anything she can see. As near as we can tell, she can affect any nonliving material. That makes her particularly difficult for those of us that rely on tools to do our jobs." He gestured to his own spear, and Armsmaster crossed his arms over his armored chest.

"If she's scoping out the lobby, then she is casing this place," Assault said. "Shit, it would only take her seconds to cut the beams and topple this whole building over. A dozen supports are all visible from that spot, enough to bring down the west facade, and half the internal structure. It wouldn't take more than a couple more beams or a hard nudge to tip the whole building over. Hundreds would die, we'd lose our communications, the workshops, our logistics, everything."

"And Spitfire, Newter and Gregor the Snail are all excellent candidates for the mop-up work," Battery added. "They could take out any survivors, or steal anything they want from the wreckage."

Velocity flicked through the pictures, thumbing the controls on the console. "So where's Labyrinth? That's the big issue. Yes, Faultline can knock down the building. She can do that from two hundred yards away without visiting us first. But the real threat is Labyrinth, always is. She's a Shaker 12, the only 12 rating in the city, for a while at least," he said, nodding to Dauntless. "She can do so much more than just tear the building down. Her limitation is that she needs to stay in a space for a while to attune herself to it. The longer she's still, the wider her range and the faster she can work. If Labyrinth is being hidden somewhere on the premises, it would only take a few days before she can change this whole building any way she likes, or the grounds around it, or half the block. We need to find her, somehow. Wharf Rat, you've broken into this place before, and you've got a knack for hiding places. Where would you hide Labyrinth around here?"

"I'd hide her wherever the real action is," Wharf Rat said, staring at the pictures. "Did I ever tell you guys about the time I visited here before I joined up?"

"No, you didn't," Miss Militia said, her voice denoting her curiosity.

He nodded to Velocity. "Hit the facial recognition software and scroll back, find me."

The speedster plugged in the parameters, told the computer to tag the facial features in the file for Wharf Rat, and find them on those cameras before the specified date. "It's gonna take several minutes," he said. "Lots of faces, lots of times to search."

"Mid-March," he said. "That'll narrow it down." He nodded while Velocity started the computer searching. "See, I sat next to Faultline at the villain's conclave after Coil released the secret identities of Empire Eighty-Eight-"

"Still not a ringing endorsement," Assault pointed out. "I'd not bring that up just everywhere."

"-and she was wearing her hair in this exact ponytail. It's a really severe look, wouldn't you say? Draws out her cheekbones, the angle of her jaw line and chin. Makes her look tough, even vicious. Even when she's not wearing her armor, you can almost see her in armor anyway. It wouldn't be hard to soften her up a bit, add a bit of makeup contouring, and even lipstick. Or just let her hair down. Maybe cover her ears and the corners of her jaw line. Or tip her sunhat down enough that it hides the eyebrows. Something like that."

"No match," Velocity said.

"That's funny, I was definitely here," he said. "Try again. Anyway, like Velocity pointed out a minute ago, she doesn't even really need to scout us out. She could stand on a balcony a half-mile away, watching through binoculars while she whittles this building down into any shape she likes. And it would take us hours to find her, if she held still, while our base was destroyed and we couldn't do anything to stop it. That's without Spitfire just setting the place on fire. We've got top-of-the-line fire suppression systems here, I should know I've seen them all, but there's very little you can do against a motivated pyrokinetic."

"Still no match."

"Look for Taylor then, she was with me. So with that said, it's kind of odd that Faultline walked in here when she could just have not shown up. Or just looked up pictures of our lobby online. Or hired someone else to take them. But instead she walked in here, probably several times, and-"

"Why do you say several times?" Triumph asked.

"Because she didn't want to be too obvious, so she kept coming back in slightly less disguise until we spotted her," Danny said.

"Got a match," Velocity said. He hit the controls, and Taylor's picture popped up on the overhead display. And right next to her was Danny, with a ball cap and sunscreen, with a slight bump on his nose and his ears sticking out slightly. "Shit, there you are."

"That disguise cost me less than five bucks and took less than two minutes to apply," Wharf Rat said. "Facial recognition software is easy to fool if you're trying to fool it. Now, how would Faultline, the leader of her own villainous mercenary group for several years, be easier to catch than me before I even had a single mission? I bet if you scroll back over the past few days you'll see her several times, slightly more disguised than today, waiting for us to figure her out."

Triumph groaned. "We were meant to see this. It's a ruse."

"Probably a distraction," Velocity said. "Crap, to make us search the whole place looking for Labyrinth."

"While the Wards are unavailable to help, because it's finals week," Miss Militia added. "Half the manpower, limited deadline, lots of space to cover. Good distraction, and all they have to do is show up and take some pictures. The rest of the team can be anywhere at all while we make ourselves crazy with this."

"Faultline doesn't do things like this on her own," Dauntless said, clasping his hands behind his back. "She works for an employer. So someone hired her to make a distraction. Shall we draw up a list of candidates?"

"Done," Velocity said, putting up a new display. His superspeed had a downside, he lost the ability to interact with the world in proportion to his speed. At ten times normal speed, he could barely lift two gallon jugs of milk, and his skin was sensitive enough that he needed to be very careful not to trip or run into anything. But his mental faculties were unaffected, and he could process at superspeed without worrying, and typing on a touch screen took very little strength.

"You've got the Undersiders, a non-powered organization or individual, an organization or individual from outside the city, or an unprecedented independent action by Faultline," Dauntless read aloud. "Honestly, that sounds about right. Hiring Faultline takes connections that are hard to make, and the kind of resources not everyone has. So, maybe it could be a villain group from another city looking to make their move. Or it could be local organized crime trying to reassert its presence now that the regular villain gangs are gone. Or, the Undersiders, who took Coil's payroll for months, robbed Brockton Bay Central Bank, have pulled dozens of other jobs, and may have all that money just socked away in their mattresses waiting to buy Faultline's help for a major job with a major payout."

"Travelers?" Wharf Rat proposed.

"Doesn't add up," Dauntless said. "They've been scrambling for small, safe scores, knocking over liquor stores and gas stations. They're lying low and hurting for money, this job is for a group that's flush with cash and feeling bold."

"So, what then?" Triumph asked.

"No idea. Theories?"

"What kind of job do you do after you've robbed a bank? What is worth robbing a bank to get the startup capital for? What do you hire high-end parahuman mercenaries for a distraction for?" Battery posed the questions.

"Maybe the better approach is to list very valuable hard-to-rob targets in the city from top to bottom," Miss Militia countered.

"The Tower," Armsmaster said. "There's the tech I've got. Hell, just the plans from Squealer's workshop are worth a few national economies."

"Seriously?" Assault blurted.

"Seriously. The most powerful tinker from Brockton Bay isn't me, or Kid Win, or Leet, or Trainwreck, or even Bakuda. It's always been Squealer. She has a talent on par with Sphere, not far behind Dragon. She squandered that talent, but she had it. Hell, she designed an engine that uses Maxwell's Demon as a power source, which is harder than most perpetual-motion machines and technically completely impossible. So yeah, those blueprints from her workshop could change international commerce, space exploration, law enforcement, devalue oil so badly that dozens of petroleum economies collapse. You could cause a dozen wars with this tech. And that's just on one desk of my workshop. There's also the stuff I've been working on with Dragon, that steps it up a notch. And the work I'm doing on these armors could change the entire power dynamic of the capes in this city, if I complete these projects it's possible that no villain in this city would have a chance. So, the Undersiders might want to interfere with that."

"But do the Undersiders know about any of that?" Triumph asked. He fidgeted with his mask in his hands.

"Assume the Undersiders know whatever you don't want them to know," Armsmaster replied. "It just saves time."

"Gotcha. But on the original subject: maybe they want to hit the bank again," Triumph said. "They've done one job there, they know the layout and the response, if they have their mercenaries with them they could probably crack the vault and make millions. That would be worth their while. And they may be counting on us not expecting that."

Velocity typed that in underneath Armsmaster's workshop. "Hmm, there's jewelry stores, we could ask around and see who's got a lot of merchandise or cash on hand for the next few days," he added.

"We should check to see who's doing cash payroll in the city," Dauntless pointed out. "Some companies might be going old-school after the Central Bank got hit."

"Oh, and the casinos on the west side," Battery added. "Especially Ruby Dreams, they're the biggest around right now."

"Armored car companies can tell us if anything particularly valuable is in the city right now," Assault added.

"You and your armored cars," she replied.

"You've been quiet," Armsmaster said to Wharf Rat. "What's up?"

The new hero turned to face him. "What? This is my first time in one of these sessions, I'm just taking notes."

"Okay, I just get ... concerned, when you start going quiet."

"Well, sometimes I know I'm out of my depth, and sometimes I'm out of my depth and I know it," Danny replied.

"That's what she said," Assault quipped.

The room immediately went into an uproar. Velocity ran out while Miss Militia threw her arms up in an aggrieved frustration. Battery leaped from the couch and shook her finger in his face, yelling "No! No! No!" over and over. Armsmaster slumped against the console and hung his head, and Triumph just pressed his hands to his temples and squeezed his eyes shut. Dauntless strode over, his face dark and ominous.

"Not again, Ethan," Dauntless said, as Battery turned away. "We're not doing this again. We can't. We just can't. Don't start us down that road again."

"Okay, okay," Assault said meekly. "I wasn't sure if it was too soon, so I thought I'd test the waters. I didn't mean anything by it."

Danny looked around the room. "Is this anything I want to know about?"

"No," echoed from Dauntless, Assault, Battery, and Armsmsaster.

"Never ask," Triumph said, looking at Danny with haunted eyes.

Miss Militia took a long cleansing breath. "All right, we've got a list of leads. Tower, bank, casinos, armored cars, cash payrolls, jewelry stores, Faultline, and the Undersiders. Eight leads, eight of us."

"I can't snoop the Undersiders specifically," Danny pointed out.

Dauntless sighed. "I know, and it's a pain. That would have been exactly where I assigned you. Okay, let's do this smart. Armsmaster, work on Tower security, especially your workshop and the armory, the motor pool and anything else particularly sensitive or valuable. Assault, you take the armored car companies, you know their procedures and vulnerabilities the best. Triumph, check out the bank, use your costumed persona and also ask some discreet questions to your personal friends. Wharf Rat, see if you can get anything good on the Faultline team, you've got history with them and a knack for tracking. Battery, take the jewelry stores, Miss Militia the casino, Velocity call around to see who's doing cash payroll these days. I'll follow up on the Undersiders. No more than four out at a time, we need to keep a response team here and ready to go immediately just in case. If this is a distraction, we'll be doing their jobs for them if we all just run off in different directions. First team on the streets is Assault, Miss Militia, Velocity and Triumph, the rest of you work the phones or buff site security. Four hours on, four hours off, eight hours sleep. I'm going to go file the paperwork to ask permission for what we're going to do anyway."

Danny chuckled as he pulled his mask on. "I feel like I've been a bad influence on you, Dauntless."

"You take credit for a lot, Wharf Rat, but maybe don't take credit for this," Dauntless said with a quirked half-smile. "Now get out there and find the Faultline Crew."

The mice scrambled up the length of his jacket as he took it down off its coat rack. "I was actually thinking about that. It would make more sense for me to wait for her to come to us. Does Faultline have any indication that we've found her picture?"

"I'd say we've done nothing to tip our hand," Dauntless said. "But then if Tattletale's involved, we have to assume they know whatever there is to know."

Danny stroked his chin with thumb and forefinger. "Damn, I hadn't really considered that. I just figured that if Faultline has been coming back again and again until she got our attention, she might come back until she knows she's got our attention. Catching her in person is better than trying to track her down to wherever her team is at."

The team leader chuckled. "I can't think that Newter or Gregor the Snail would be hard to find."

Wharf Rat nodded. "Yeah, I'll try to use what Mouse Protector taught me to good use."

"Mouse Protector taught you how to track villains?" Dauntless looked skeptical. "I wouldn't have thought you had a lot to learn."

"I've found half the villains in the city. She taught me how to find the other half," he said, and gave a nod as he walked to the elevators.

* * *

The trail itself was long cold. He was able to pick up Faultline's scent in the lobby, he had memorized it during the conclave at Somer's Rock pub. He followed it for a couple of blocks and then it was lost in a mysterious puddle of some fluid that neutralized all scents that it came in contact with. He recognized that as being the work of Gregor the Snail, one of her mercenaries. He was capable of producing substances in his body with a wide variety of effects, which he could project from his translucent skin at will, and apparently a scent neutralizer was one of his options. So, that was not possible. Nor was following her back to Somer's Rock and trying to backtrack her trail weeks after the fact. Canvassing the city with rats was feasible, but he had no idea how much time he did have, he would eventually pick up their trail but that could well be after the Undersiders had done whatever they were planning.

But a few phone calls to Danny Hebert's friends had gotten him phone numbers to friends of theirs that they wouldn't give to just anyone, after he promised that no trouble would come to those friends. His assurances, and their trust, got him in touch with the premiere money-launderers of Brockton Bay. For some jobs, only good old-fashioned organized crime would do, and union work and organized crime were never far from each other. And for a major mercenary outfit like Faultline, that took in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time and needed a low profile, money laundering was essential.

And he lucked out. When he chatted with Paulie "Pops" Fizioli, he found that not only did the money launderer know some things about Faultline and her crew, he also had enough of a grudge against them to talk to him with no strings attached. Apparently he did not take it well that Faultline had taken the money he laundered for her at his standard rate, and invested it in a club she was using to launder her own money now, cutting him out of her operation entirely. As long as nothing came back on him, he was willing to share this information with the legitimate authorities, or whatever Wharf Rat represented.

So now Wharf Rat was hanging around an alleyway across the street, considering his options. From the rats crawling in the walls and ceilings, he was confident that the entire mercenary group was living in the apartments above the nightclub, which meant that he had not only their operations center but also their homes. One phone call and he could have this entire mercenary group shut down and put away. The entire team could come sweeping in here, outnumbering the villains eight to six, with the advantage of surprise and an opening volley that would likely take half the mercenaries out of the fight before it even started.

But he had no idea what the new woman's powers were. She smelled of gun oil and soap, had red hair and green eyes, and she wore a fitted costume. That was all he could glean. And, Labyrinth was upstairs in her room, and likely hadn't left there in a long time. She would be in complete control of her surroundings, trying to besiege this place would be a nightmare. The kind of nightmare where everything goes wrong and everyone dies. Spitfire, Newter, Gregor and Faultline were known quantities, but not pushovers. So calling his team in for a frontal assault could go very badly. And the only way he saw to avoid a long drawn-out battle that could take a lot of casualties, was to blast the building so hard and so fast that it would kill the mercenaries instantly. And he wasn't sure he wanted either of those outcomes on his conscience.

He was still casing the place when he heard movement from the manager's office, down the stairs, and down the hall. He repositioned his rats for a better view, and then he stepped further back into the shadows when Faultline walked out the front door. Her hair was down, she had lipstick on, and sunglasses that covered her eyebrows. It was enough to make her almost unrecognizable. She walked a couple blocks away, stopping in at a sandwich shop to order a half-dozen meals to go. She paid in cash, tipped the woman behind the counter, and walked out with her bags in hand. And as soon as she was out of sight of the shop, a tall man in a trenchcoat walked out of an alleyway and crossed in front of her, sitting on the bus stop bench. The man was wearing a white skintight hood over his head with glass lenses and a built-out mouthpiece reminiscent of an animal s muzzle or snout. He glanced her way, and patted the bench next to him.

Faultline unfroze her legs and walked forward, sitting next to the man. "Should I ask how you found me?" she said through gritted teeth.

The Wharf Rat nodded up at a collection of pigeons sitting on a wire overhead. "I have lots of eyes."

"And there I thought you only control rats," she said, giving him an appraising glance.

He raised one hand, with a single finger extended. A pigeon flew down, landed on his finger, bobbed towards her like it was taking a bow, and then flew away. He slouched back against the bench. "So my team is concerned about what you and your people might do," he said. "They're sure that you and your team were hired to distract us away from whatever your employers are going to pull. They're worried about armored cars and banks and jewelry stores," he said.

"And you're not?" the mercenary captain asked him, her tone leading his response.

"No, I'm worried about people. That's the only thing that's ever worth worrying about. You sort of implied that you would kill hundreds of people, and that makes Dauntless worried about what you might do, and it makes me worried about what you might make me do."

"You're worried I'd kill that many people?" she asked.

He reached into his breast pocket and lifted out one of the two small white mice. "I don't know enough about you," he said. "Sorry. I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but the stakes are kind of high."

"I wouldn't kill that many people," she said. "Not unless there was no other way, or if I really thought that they all deserved it."

The mouse could smell that she was not lying, so the Wharf Rat could smell that she wasn't lying. "And so now I guess I have two questions: is there another way, and do all of those people deserve to die?"

"I'm not nearly desperate enough to think that's the only way out," she said. "And I would need to research every one of those PRT employees to know if they deserved to die. I have not researched that. So in short: I don't intend to kill all those people."

He nodded. "Thank you for that. I don't actually want to fight you. I'd like to think you don't want to fight me-"

She snorted a laugh through her nose. "Rest assured of that. You know my power's weakness?"

"Living creatures," he said, nodding. "You can destroy any gun there is, cut missiles in half in the air, but you're no better off against rats and dogs and pigeons than anyone else."

Faultline nodded. "Spitfire could probably handle you. Maybe even Gregor and Newter. But I bet that Lung and Skidmark and Crusader thought the same way."

"I didn't ask them," he said, shrugging. "But then, I knew enough about them."

"You said you don't know enough about me," she pointed out. "Just a minute ago."

Wharf Rat stared across the street towards the dry-cleaner's that was closing up its doors. "I did. For example, you and your people work for a lot of money, you earn it. You work hard. You don't take month-long vacations to the Bahamas, or drive sports cars. You need that money for something."

"Answers," she said. "Expensive answers."

"I'm good at answers," he pointed out.

She shook her head. "Not like this. Way above your pay grade, hero."

"Shame," he commented. "Try me anyway?"

Faultline considered it a minute. "You seem reasonable," she said. "Okay, I and every member of my team have amnesia. And a brand," she said, tugging up her shirt to show him the mark on her waist. "The same mark on all of us. Lots of capes have them, and the amnesia. And almost all of them are like Newter and Gregor, disfigured or inhuman. Someone did this to us. We have a lot of speculation, but it's hard to weave it into facts without mixing in a lot of paranoid conspiracies. So we need answers. Bribes, investigators, access, those all cost money, and we invest all of our shares into those answers."

Wharf Rat nodded. "Noble and commendable. Do you have any local leads I can pursue locally?"

"I don't," she said. "You're offering to help?"

"If I can," he said.

"I don't think you can," she said, standing. "You seem nice enough. I hope we don't have to fight."

"I am nice enough," he replied, "Is there any way that you might not make me fight you?"

She tucked her hair back from her face. "We can leave the city after this job. With Coil gone, and Kaiser gone, there's not much need for us here. We can pull down high prices and plenty of work nearly anywhere, but Brockton Bay is turning into a long dry spell for us, just some bodyguarding and hits for the local mafia or the cartels trying to get these shipping lanes. This current job is the biggest thing we've had in weeks, and it's table scraps and we know it."

He sat on the bench, staring up at her. "If you're going to leave, we won't have to come to blows. If you can give me some assurances, I can make that happen from my side."

"Assurances," she said. "That was the word that Trickster kept using, that and 'collateral'."

"And then he used you to get to me with a knife to my throat," Wharf Rat pointed out.

Faultline shifted the bags in her hands. "He did that. How about this: I assure you that our part in this job does not involve us killing anyone or doing any permanent damage or loss. We're a distraction. A very big, very elaborate distraction for someone else's purposes."

He nodded, and glanced up. She followed his gaze as the pigeons took off, all flapping away over the roofs. He stood, and returned the mouse to his pocket before he straightened the coat. "That's just about all I need to know," he said. "If you get yourself set up in a city nearby, I may call you asking for a favor. And that favor may be me asking for the chance to help you find your answers."

Faultline transferred the other bag to her left hand and took his hand to shake. Then he turned and walked away into the shadows, and she walked back to her team headquarters.

* * *

"Piggot's gonna be pissed," Armsmaster predicted. "She just talked to you about negotiating with villains instead of arresting them."

Danny looked the man right in the eye. "But she got the drop on me while I was out investigating. I talked her down from killing me, and got us some good terms in exchange."

Armsmaster sighed, and tapped the side of his helmet. "This darn voice-stress lie detector. It seems to be on the fritz again," he said drolly.

Dauntless crossed his arms. "Dammit you two. Okay, looking at positives: Faultline's crew is now off the table, we can safely ignore anything they're going to do. Because Wharf Rat's lie detector was not on the fritz, right?"

"Right."

"Good. So, we can focus on the real issues, the Undersiders. We know what we're up against, now we need to know what they're planning," Dauntless said. "Anyone?"

Triumph spoke up first. "The bank doesn't know anything about it, their vault is actually a bit low. Their reputation took a hit after the last Undersiders robbery, and people have been pulling their money out and closing accounts. They're terrified that another high-profile robbery could finish them off for good, but I can't see any way for the Undersiders to profit from that unless they own a competing bank."

"Or if they've got a ton of loans out from that bank," Miss Militia added. "Okay, next is the casinos. I got no answers from them, but I think their security forces have more guns than I've had in my whole life put together. Could Tattletale be planning some sort of Ocean's Eleven action there?"

Dauntless considered. "A classic heist? I don't think anyone does those anymore. Anyone but Tattletale, I'd rule it out. But not yet."

Armsmaster spoke up. "I've set cameras to watch the alleys, roads, and rooftops for two blocks around us, plugged into the facial recognition system, equipped with the Undersider's composite sketches and some photographs of those giant monsters they ride on. I've got my most sensitive and valuable technology locked up in a vault that will self-destruct if they test it too much. And I've rushed through some of those armors so we've got some finished materials to work with for a counteroffensive if we need to. We've set some guards on the motor pool to keep an eye on the vehicles, and if anything happens they've got dead-man-switch alarms that ring to us immediately."

"This is a slow week for the armored car companies," Assault said. "You can judge the value of the contents by how much insurance the client takes out, and there's no super-diamond being transferred, or million-dollar art exhibits being relocated, or anything like that. There should have been at least one good score, just by law of averages, but I came up bust."

Battery sighed. "Jewelers are a weirdly insular little world. They all know each other's business, but they keep each other's secrets. If anything is seriously going down in their departments, they'd rather trust each other than ask for our help."

"And to answer your question about cash payrolls," Velocity said, "there is literally no way to know other than to phone up every company in Brockton Bay and ask them weirdly invasive questions about their business practices and security weaknesses. I have been hung up on more today than in my entire life."

Dauntless folded his hands behind his back and started pacing. "So, two probably not, two almost certainly not, and two inconclusive. I'll ask the PRT to get its desk personnel and analysts calling around about the payroll thing, but aside from that all we can do is stand by for fast response when something does happen. Okay, I want someone on the console at all times, sleep in shifts, watch the police band and news and every other monitor we've got. Shower in shifts, only one person is to be out of uniform at any time. These two elevators are going to be locked for our use, on a moment we pile in and straight down to the hangar. Get one of the motor pool guys to stand by ready to warm up and checklist the VTOL at a moment's notice, I want it ready to fly as soon as we hit the flight deck. No delays, and we can do this."

His tone made it clear that the briefing was over, and Miss Militia called dibs on the first shower. Dauntless took the first shift on the console, scrolling endlessly through anything that could hint at trouble. Wharf Rat paused at Armsmaster's side. "Hey, Colin. I gave that prototype a test run, and it worked perfectly," he said. "I could even get it to make a seamless landing on my finger and then take off again. I had Faultline fully convinced that I could control pigeons as well as rats, she thinks I've been understating my powers all along."

Colin laughed as he pulled his helmet off. "I bet a lot of people will be willing to believe that. It will help them understand how you've been able to take down ten villains on your own. It makes them think that you've got lots of powers you haven't disclosed yet."

"Eleven villains," Danny corrected absently. "Seriously, though, do you realize that this is the first action I've seen since I joined the Protectorate? I was kicking butts two at a time or three at a time, and then I became an official hero and now suddenly I'm sidelined every day."

Colin shook his head. "I'm not going to encourage you to go after the Travelers. You've got them backed right into a corner, and they're dangerous as hell." He turned away, and waved to Velocity and Triumph to come over and check out their new costumes.

Danny walked away, and took a seat on the couch furthest from the television. Assault picked something that was a bit too Vin Diesel for his tastes, so he just pulled out his cell phone. Being in the Tower always struck him as being weirdly quiet: Being a couple hundred feet above ground level meant that a much smaller footprint of his power's range was actually on the ground or below it, and the Director had demanded that he evacuate the rats from the area. So, all he had was himself and the half-dozen cute white mice in the cage in the corner that rotated out the duties in his pockets. It was almost surreal to see the world through so few eyes. He pulled out his phone to distract himself.

"Hey Dad," Taylor said when she picked up. "Whatcha up to?"

"Standing by waiting for the Undersiders to make a move," he said. "We may have them busted by the time you and the other Wards take duty next week."

"That'd be nice, we could use a quiet week," she said. "Dennis was just regaling us on the ride over here, sharing stories from last year when we go straight from finals to dealing with graduation and taking every single patrol shift at the same time. Even worse that double-shifts on Christmas, he said."

Danny laughed with her. "So, I wish I could be there to help with your homework. I'm just a couple floors away, but Dauntless wants us ready to jump straight into the jet as soon as the Undersiders make their move, no delays at all."

"I wish you were here too, dad. But at least I get more time with you now that we had when I was at Winslow and you were a rogue, so there's that. And once you guy get the Undersiders, there will only be ten or twelve villains left in the city?"

"Faultline is leaving once this job is done," he said. "So, if ber and Leet are still active, it's the two of them plus four Travelers."

"Oh, you heard back from Trainwreck?"

"Yeah, it's a weird system where I have to cruise past that area to check for message drops, but I've managed to open talks. At first he was just shouting at me in text, giant bold letters about how I needed to fuck off and whatever, but I convinced him that I'm sincere, and it turns out that he needs a visit from Panacea same as Circus did. Did you know that he's basically just a torso? That's why he never leaves his power armor, without it he's crippled."

"God, this business is weird," Taylor said. "Look, I've got a ton of conjugating to do down here, and I'd better get to it."

"Hey quick question. Do any of the Wards ever say 'that's what she said'?"

"No, never. Huh, that's kind of weird, you'd think locker-room humor would be all the rage in this place."

"Interesting. Okay, chat with you later, Benthic."

"Love you Wharf Rat."

He sat back and grinned a bit, then he dialed another number.

"Hello Wharf Rat."

"Hello Dinah," he said to the precog he had rescued weeks ago. "How's things?"

"Well, I'm going to pass my classes and graduate on time," she said. "I thought I'd have to repeat the grade or do summer school, what with the whole abduction thing. You've had a busy week."

"Yeah," he said. "I've gotten two, maybe four villains to stand down and go straight recently. Five more are leaving the city. Four more are probably going to get arrested as soon as they make a move. I spent a few days with Mouse Protector, and that is an exhausting woman for sure. And, thanks for telling everyone not to let me go after the Travelers. I almost got stubborn and got killed, but people around here are good people and they made me do the right thing."

"And I'm glad to hear it. You know whenever I've got some spare energy for questions, I ask whether you're going to be okay," she said. "So I've told you that you and I are probably going to be working together some day, right?"

"Yeah, but not in the Protectorate," he said. "I remember that part."

"So I've been thinking about codenames for myself," Dinah said. "Maybe something really epic and mysterious, like The Future. Or something more literal, like Predictor. But sometimes I think something a little funnier, like Odd Girl Out, because I know the odds of stuff."

He chuckled. "If you're thinking of codenames, you're putting the cart in front of the horse by a good margin. I'd be more concerned with how you'd arrange to fight crime and go to school if you're not in the Wards. They get special permission, but if you're not with them you're gonna have a problem."

"I don't understand the specific stuff yet," she said. "But I do know the odds. And there's a seventy-percent chance that you and I are gonna work on the same team, a ninety-eight percent chance that the team we're on is not Protectorate but not villains, and an eighty-percent chance that someday soon the whole world is going to think you're as awesome as I do, at least for a while."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I can't see it, but I know you're going to do something way beyond amazing that puts you up with Legend and Eidolon," she said confidently. "And, it's gonna be soon. I've thought about breaking my power just to see what it is, it'll take me days or a couple weeks to get back to normal, but it might be worth it to see it ahead of time."

"You probably shouldn't do that," he said. "There aren't many emergencies that make that worthwhile."

"You sound like my dad."

"I should, I'm a dad too, you know," he said. "Someday I'll introduce you to my own daughter."

"Sure," she said, and her voice was suddenly sad. "Listen, I've gotta go, it's dinner time, okay?"

"No problem," he said. "Hey, Dinah?"

"Yeah?"

"I kind of like Gambler," he said.

"Gambler is good," she replied, a little brighter. "Bye Mister Rat."

Miss Militia sat bolt upright. "I've got it. The casinos! They used to put all their deposits in the Brockton Bay Central Bank! Have they stopped making deposits there?"

:"Looking it up," Dauntless said, his fingers clacking over keys. "Um, looks like no. So what are they doing with all that cash?"

Armsmaster rolled to his feet, snatching up his Halberd. "They've been stuffing it in the mattress like idiots. People always do the wrong thing when they're scared. And now they've got millions of dollars in cash there on the premises. This seriously is Ocean's Eleven."

Assault shut off the DVD and the rest of the team looked back and forth amongst themselves. "Okay," Triumph said, breaking the tension with the question nobody wanted to ask. "How do we set a trap for Tattletale?"

* * *

In the movie, the casino's vault was an impenetrable monster set in a sub-basement that the thieves had to get to by traversing an elevator shaft full of lasers. But Brockton Bay was not Las Vegas. It would take an enormous amount of construction to make an underground vault possible, and that much construction would be impossible to keep quiet, and it would cost a fortune in bribes to make enough people look the other direction. The Ruby Dream took its security the other direction. The vault was on the second floor, out in the open with clear sight lines and plenty of visibility for the guards to make sure that nobody was trying to open the door or drill through the walls. The manager's office was directly above the vault room, with two guards on a rotating schedule and the manager himself, who was trustworthy beyond rebuke. The bottom of the vault sat directly above the main floor of the gaming room, with a single reinforced loadbearing pillar in the middle of it to hold the weight of the massive room. The center of the gaming room was the most visible and least defensible part of the entire casino. Seismic sensors made sure no clever thieves tried to burrow up through the load-bearing pillar, camera surveillance covered every side including the manager's office. The guards had more firepower than the city's PRT division. Only four people had the combination to the door, and they were under constant suspicion.

And one of those people was approaching the elevator now. The guard at the door gave him a nod. "Good to have ya back, Grimes. Ya know the boss worries when someone don't check in." The elevator was on one end of the main gaming room, where a bunch of the city's second-tier wealthy elite came to indulge their vices without having to leave the city. The casino was paid up with the right people to keep it safe from the cops so that nobody would hassle its customers. It had been owned by the Cosa Nostra organization back in the sixties, and had changed hands until it was most recently under the control of Lung and the ABB. But with the elimination of that gang, and the failure of any new villain groups to seize power and territory, it was now being run by the middlemen who had overseen it before. And rather than passing on the massive profits from its operation to some villains, they now kept the winnings for themselves.

Grimes nodded distractedly. He was a short squat man with thick glasses and a thick mustache, and his breath reeked of menthol and he was clutching a napkin. He lifted it up in front of him, and the guard leaned forward to read the printing on it. "Los your voice huh? That sucks Grimes, sorry ta hear it. C'mon, let's get ya upstairs," the guard said, punching the button for the elevator. A minute later the doors opened with a ding, and Grimes stepped in. The elevator attendant turned away to push a button, then turned back towards the accountant.

The doors opened on the third floor, and six guards stood with their guns leveled at his chest. "Shame that you missed a check-in," the one on the far right said. "We thought we could trust ya, Grimes. Now, you're gonna come sit in the boss's office and explain to us what Tattletale offered you to sell us out." Up here, the walls were not paneled in faux-mahogany and the ceiling was not restored tile, there was cinderblock and acoustic ceiling tiles. It was just as cheap as the decorations downstairs, but it wasn't trying as hard.

The night manager of the casino was one of those four people as well. He sat behind his desk, clipping his cigar when Grimes was brought in, still clutching his napkin and his bag of lozenges. "Siddown", the guard demanded. Six of them ringed him from behind, plus the two behind the manager.

Meanwhile, across the city, Director Emily Piggot was marching back and forth through the bullpen, listening as the PRT operators were fielding a sudden flood of calls from panicked residents. Reports of a giant white dragon, shining all over, with massive spreading wings, were coming in from the club district. Incredible amounts of smoke and fire were everywhere, and people were turning into demons or floating blobs of color and noise in the streets. Pandemonium was taking over the area, but the operators only assured the callers that everything was under control. She crossed the bullpen to the office of the head of communications, and barged into his office.

"Still the same thing," he said, looking up at her. "It matches what Dauntless gave us. It's not an Endbringer, and we can't even be certain that anyone has died at all. Reports are very inconsistent, but so far so good. I just didn't expect it to be so... big." Police lines were jammed up the same way, as people called to report the gleaming white dragon that crouched over the party district belching fire and ringed with smoke. And everywhere people were shifting, changing, and madness ruled the streets.

But the night manager at the Ruby Dream had more immediate problems. The dragon was a few blocks away and not heading this direction, so the treachery of Grimes the accountant was still his biggest priority. Making sure that the patrons downstairs didn't find out about the dragon was second priority, panicking people stopped gambling and started leaving. He wove his threats carefully, masterfully, the precise degrees of pain and cruelty and humiliation that would visit upon Grimes if he didn't tell them what the Undersiders had offered him for the codes. Grimes just held up his napkin, making low strained noises in his throat.

The guard slapped the napkin out of his hands, and then the bag of lozenges. "Nobody's buying it, Grimes!" the guard barked.

"Okay," Grimes said, his face suddenly twisting from desperate innocence to self-satisfied deviousness. "I'll tell you everything, but you guys have to understand one thing."

"That don't sound like Grimes," a guard said.

"They didn't offer me anything," the short squat mustachioed man said. "They just took what they wanted. Hey, gather in here, real close, will ya?" he said. "C'mon, closer, you gotta hear this."

"Yeah?" the manager said, leaning forward.

And that's when a heavy cable below snapped taut between Brutus and Judas's collars, straining for a second before the pillar broke off. And the giant vault dropped straight down, through the floor to crash onto the giant "JACKPOT" sign above the best-rigged slot machines. People had been running since the dogs grew into monsters, but a dozen tons of steel slamming down through the ceiling and into the beeping and flashing machines just motivated them more. The slot machines were smashed to pieces in a shower of sparks, and then darkness wreathed the room, spreading through the doors and reaching for the vault. The metal structure left nothing over it but a thin veneer of floorboards as the support was pulled out underneath, and Grimes grinned manically as he stomped his feet and broke through the floorboards, caving in the floor. Eight guards, a manager and an accountant fell two stories and landed on top of the giant metal surface, ringing it like a gong before the shadows swallowed them and their screams.

"Can you get your rats in there?" Dauntless asked as they burst out of the building across the street.

"No good, they'd be as blind and deaf as us, that stuff even muffles their sense of smell," Wharf Rat said.

"I'm going to turn up the gain on my radar," Armsmaster said. "I'm going in." Wharf Rat had argued to leave Armsmaster behind to guard the tower, but he had been outvoted.

"Me too," Triumph said. His armor had the same lion motif as before, the open mouth framing his face. Most of his face was protected by a clear bulletproof visor that opened enough to let his sonic shout escape then slid closed afterwards. His armor was surprisingly bulky, making the most of his superior strength and his ability to carry the weight. He charged forward, bellowing out blasts the sent debris flying in front of him, the concussive force of it undiminished in the field of darkness that masked the Undersider's movements.

"You're on second line with me," Battery said, catching Assault's arm before he could fling himself forward. He paused, nodded, and stood ready. Miss Militia stretched out a hand and Dauntless caught it, carrying her up to the rooftop to guard from an elevated position so they could keep the Undersiders from taking to the rooftops to escape that way.

Velocity hung back next to Wharf Rat. "If I run in there in the dark, I'll break a leg," he said. "And I'm mostly carrying flashbangs that won't work in there, and containment foam that could get Armsmaster or Triumph as easily as any Undersider."

Wharf Rat nodded. "None of us can help every time."

"Glad to hear that even you understand that," Velocity chuckled. "You're a bit of a showoff."

"Darkness is spreading, it's on the move!" Wharf Rat yelled out. He was surprised by how fast it could move, how much area it could cover. It moved forward fast enough to take Assault and Battery in a second, before they could make a move. It billowed up, covering rooftops and the street, there was no way to tell which way they were going. Wharf Rat closed his eyes, breathed a second. Can't fix this with rats. Can't fix this with punching. Can't fix this with talking. Need a solution, outside the box, different style of thinking. He turned to Velocity. "Get in there, the street is clear so you should be able to run safely. Every time you run into something, hit it with a containment-foam grenade," he said.

Velocity nodded. "Man, I hope that this armor is more impact-resistant than it looks," he said, and dashed into the darkness. The cloud swept over him, and he stood in the darkness, still and silent, hoping that he didn't get blindsided. After a few minutes the darkness receded towards the northeast, and he came out into the open again. He looked around to take it all in. Armsmaster was on the ground, breathing but definitely the worse for wear. Triumph was standing safe and sound in a ring of total wreckage and ruin, the front of the casino basically disintegrated, and he was breathing heavy but healthy. Dauntless was nowhere to be seen, but everyone else was more or less where they had been. Velocity was out of containment-foam grenades, but there was no sign of containment foam on the scene.

Miss Militia was on the roof, looking through the scope of her sniper rifle. "They're heading to the club district," she reported. "Straight for the dragon."

"And the hallucinogens from Newter, and the smoke and fire, and the crowds of people tripping their balls off, plus whatever escape routes Labyrinth built into the place," Triumph added, clearly pissed off.

"They've got at least a dozen containment-foam grenades stuck to each dog," Velocity said. "They're gonna be really ungainly and really easy to catch. We just gotta keep up and keep our eyes open."

But it didn't work out that easily. They found the containment foam lying on the street with several hundred pounds of steaming meat that was breaking down even as they watched. There was a lot of fabric stuck to it as well, pieces of costumes and two entire leather jackets. But no sign of the money, and no sign of the Undersiders. Dauntless looked over at Wharf Rat. "Please break your promise and track these guys," he said, his eyes pleading.

That look was a knife in Danny's gut, twisting. "I promised," he said. "People lived because I promised.."

"Several people died today because of your promise," Miss Militia said.

"And more after that," Battery added. "Just track them. Find them. They'll go to the Birdcage. Nobody will even know you broke your word."

"I can't," Danny said weakly.

"You were able to go after Purity, and you made a promise then too."

"I promised not to go after Kayden Anders, as Kayden Anders. She came to me as Purity, that's not nearly the same thing. I promised Tattletale, as Tattletale, that I wouldn't go after them. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I did promise."

"You always find the loopholes to let them off the hook," Armsmaster sighed. "You're an idiot. No, a _fucking_ idiot. Tattletale played you. She figured you out and she got herself a lifelong immunity from the most effective hero in the city, and all it cost her was one phone call to tell you where to find the only two villains in the city more pathetic than ber and Leet. She played you, and you _let_ her play you, and you're _still_ letting her play you."

"But we can do so much more good by talking to people, we can help more people if we just..." Danny trailed off, sighed. "Fuck it. Fine. You wanna do this? Call the BBPD. Get a goddamned K9 unit over here. They'll track the Undersiders. Those dogs of theirs stink for hours after they've shed their skin, it'll be easy to follow. I'm not breaking my promise." He turned and stormed away, not even sure which direction he was going. The VTOL was nowhere nearby, he had no cab fare, and the tunnel buggy was back at the Tower. But he needed to blow off a lot of steam before he could look these people in the eyes again.

At least he could know that Faultline and her people were leaving. Just one faction left.

* * *

Danny walked and thought, and a swarm or rats built up alongside him. The roads were nearly empty, he had the night to himself. He chose a winding path back to the Tower, while in the distance he could still hear the wail of sirens as various emergency vehicles responded to the various incidents. And every rat that came within two hundred yards of him was pulled in his direction, until he walked through a virtual sea of the small lithe bodies, an ankle-deep carpet of fur and teeth that followed him from one side of the street to the other. It seemed to help him clear his mind to be surrounded by them like that. There were no squeaks or chitters, just the near-silent rustle of bodies moving in tandem and tiny feet padding along the asphalt. The city was never really dark, shadows only took hold in tight alleys away from streetlamps. And in this part of the city, as he walked through the Boardwalk district, even the alleys tended to have lights for safety or security. The sky was low and soupy, humidity from off the ocean gathered in low-lying clouds that threw back the city's light and looked more like a poorly-maintained ceiling than any kind of actual sky or open space. On some nights, even the empty streets of Brockton were claustrophobic and restless.

His phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket. He saw the caller ID, declined the call. A minute later a text came to his phone. "K9 followed to Faultline's distraction. ppl hallucinating, smoke everywhere. Lost trail."

He tucked the phone back into his pocket and kept walking. He knew that tonight's screwups were only his fault. Tattletale was abusing the promise he made, but he had made it of his own free will and he did not regret it, even now. Squealer's doombuggy could have killed hundreds in their joyride, and the Protectorate had not been close enough to help, or fast enough to help. The fact that he could not figure out a way to stop the Merchants without making that promise to Tattletale, that was on him. The fact that he could not figure out how to take down the Undersiders without breaking his promise, that was on him. He did not think he was wrong for refusing to break his word, but he did think he was wrong for letting it limit him so much. He just needed to think outside the box, think in unexpected ways. Tattletale was a thinker, but she wasn't the Simurgh, there would be ways to pull one over on her. The same question from earlier in the night: how do you set a trap for Tattletale? Obviously the answer was not to go to the scene where she would be pulling a heist and then trying to fight her and her team there in the street.

"Wharf Rat!" called a voice from ahead of him, and he brought himself back to the here and now. The front doors of the tower were always guarded by two soldiers from the PRT, but normally they didn't speak. The male soldier saw he had the hero's attention and called out again, "We've got word from the Director, and you're to go straight to her office."

"Oh, is that what my orders are?" Danny said, holding the guard's gaze with a hard look of his own.

When the elevator opened on the top floor, Danny Hebert walked out in a flood of small lithe bodies covered in sleek fur and chisel-like teeth. It was the scene from _The Shining_ , played out with rats instead of blood. He stepped through them without an issue and they swarmed all around him, in front and behind. The door to the Director's office opened and he walked in, his minions streaming in along with him, climbing furniture and shelves, swirling around the empty corners, piling up along the side of his legs as he stood at parade rest in front of her desk. "I hear you wanted to speak to me," he said.

"You're feeling dramatic," the director sniffed, and he suddenly felt self-conscious about the display he was making. "You are on a roll, Wharf Rat. I call to dress you down for abandoning a mission and letting villains escape, and you use your parahuman powers to threaten me before I've even said a word. You're not just racking up demerits in the Protectorate, you're also taking steps to get yourself confined to Baumann."

"I've done nothing to merit being sent to the Birdcage," he said. "You could try it, but you'd overreach yourself and lose your own position," he pointed out. He knew she was bluffing, but if he said outright that she was bluffing then the conversation would break down into a standoff of her pride against his stubbornness. But he knew that pointing out the limits of her authority and the very real chance that she would lose her post, that would make her think instead of just reacting.

"They're not going to take the word of one cape with a checkered past against a Director of the PRT," she said, her voice cold and her eyes sharp.

He sat down across from her, as rats swarmed across her desk and brushed against her ankles, invading her personal space. "Why is that, Director?" he said. "Because you spent so many years earning this position? Because you proved yourself trustworthy beyond reproach in your service to the PRT? Because you've had such remarkable results and successes in this position?" he kept outright mockery out of his voice, but he let enough skepticism in that she could tell what his assessment was of each of those questions. They both knew that she had been promoted way past her capacity as a bribe to keep her hushed about the PRT's mishandling of the Nilbog case. And they both knew that her years in this job had been unremarkable and involved less publicity and arrests than his short career.

"Because you, just like every _para_ human," she hissed, stressing the prefix that separated him from humanity, "are damaged people. It's not just this that makes you a monster," she said, sweeping her hand across the curtain of rats that was squirming all along her bookshelves. "It's the fact that you were broken. You were pushed past your limits and instead of harmlessly retiring to an asylum for treatment, you got the power to kill people hundreds at a time. Do you know how many of your coworkers have chronic nightmares? Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder? Aggression issues, highly developed defense mechanisms, personality disorders? That's why you and all your kind need to be restrained and restricted, so that sane humans can direct your lethal powers instead of just letting you work out your personal traumas on the world at large."

He cocked his head to the side. "But Director, not everyone can have a trigger event," he said.

The rats went still, and the words rang in the room, falling on silence. He held her eyes, she held his. He could see her processing it: she had no capacity to become a parahuman, otherwise she would have powers of her own. Because she had certainly had the opportunity when Nilbog's minions chased her through several miles of living nightmares and grotesque monsters, killed and devoured her squadmates, then caught her, tortured her, and ate half the meat off of her legs and half of her abdomen before she was rescued. She was permanently crippled, nearly died, stranded alone with the monsters, and to this day she had medical complications that impeded her every day. If the parahumans should not be given authority because they were broken and traumatized, she was just as broken, just as traumatized. By her own words, by her own reasoning, she should lose her job immediately.

He held her gaze, and she held his. Then she spoke, "So I didn't trigger, didn't gain any powers like you did. That proves nothing."

"True," he said easily. "But it must have been so disappointing. Having gone through that, and coming though it without powers. And here we are, the Protectorate, the Wards. A dozen people who went through trauma less than yours, and gained vast power doing it. Super speed, invulnerability, genius inventions, power to change the world. We didn't pay anything you didn't pay or earn anything you didn't earn, but here we are with fame and acclaim and power. And here you are, a cripple."

She barked a laugh. "Are you trying to insinuate that I'm jealous of you freaks? That I wish I was a cape too?"

"Absolutely not," he said. "You just wish that we weren't capes either. Your feelings are too far from hope or creativity for you to want what we've got, you just want to destroy what we've got. And maybe I can't prove it, but I can use that as the heading if I were to file a vote of no confidence."

"It'll never work," she vowed.

"A vote of no-confidence can be used to call for a full audit of policy decisions and internal memoranda," Wharf Rat pointed out, leaning back. "A review from the Chief Director. Ma'am, your assistant director was the only other survivor from the Nilbog massacre, and to any auditor his appointment will look like nepotism. A supervillain infiltrated the PRT, because you recruited and promoted a man who went to prison for killing his superior officer for your own personal feelings. And then you embarked on a campaign of harassment against the hero that brought him to justice. Director, do you know what a policy audit would look like to someone in your position?"

"You've been sowing insurrection among the other Protectorate members since you arrived," she pointed out.

"The difference between treason and revolution is what the history books have to say," the Wharf Rat pointed out. "But now we're just dancing. You called me up here to talk about me abandoning the mission today."

She eagerly seized on this subject instead. "Yes, there are penalties for dereliction of duty and desertion. Docking pay, restricted movements, duty shifts, and more."

He nodded. "Okay."

"Okay?" she echoed.

"Okay. I'll sign off on a written reprimand for my file. I'll agree to whatever terms of punishment you think are appropriate," he said. "I will cooperate fully in this matter in which I am self-admittedly at fault. And any punishment you assign will be documented in my file and yours. I am certain that you will assign me a fair and equitable punishment in proportion to what you normally assign to my teammates in similar circumstances." He held her eyes through this, his voice holding just a little too much sincerity.

And there was the trap. He was giving her the opportunity to take out her frustrations, but it would come up during an audit. Or she could swallow her indignation and let him off with the usual slap on the wrist. If she threw the book at him, she would be on record as a bully. If she knuckled under, then she and he both walked away knowing that she had given ground. Even if she used some sneaky underhanded methods to get her vindictive revenge, they would both know who had lost this staredown.

"I'll decide later," she snarled. "Now get out of my office and take your filth with you."

* * *

"This is a bit out of the way," Kid Win pointed out.

Danny walked along, shooting a look at the looming clouds overhead. They looked like rain, and soon. Maybe not the best day to be walking about like this. "I just have an errand to run, it won't take any time at all."

"Again, Dad?" Taylor asked, frowning slightly.

"I'm almost done, baby," he said. "It's kind of hard to communicate, what with all the paranoia and countermeasures."

Kid Win, Chris, looked between the father and daughter. "Um, what's up?"

"I'm not allowed to talk to any more villains with the intention of dissuading them from their criminal lifestyles," Danny said. "I'm supposed to fight them, not talk them out of being bad guys or trying to recruit them. But maybe messages get picked up and dropped off by completely anonymous rodents."

Chris shot him a skeptical look. "Dude, I'm not sure I can condone that. Who is it that you're conspicuously not talking to?"

"Trainwreck," Danny said.

Chris considered that. He thought about how Browbeat, the strongest and toughest of the Wards, had been one-shotted by Trainwreck, and Aegis had been beaten down just as easily. How Trainwreck had ignored Kid Win's best attacks during the arrest of Coil and that street battle with the Travelers. The villain tinker did ugly and inelegant work, but it was enormously powerful. "I really would like to see Trainwreck off the streets," Chris said. "Normally that means sending them to jail. But honestly anything that keeps him from hurting anyone is probably okay."

"Turns out that Trainwreck is actually badly deformed," Danny said. "Not much more than a torso. But Panacea owes me some favors, and if he can get real arms and real legs, he's promised to walk the path of the righteous. So I'm going to check in and make sure the work got done."

Taylor shrugged. "It's always something with him," she said to Chris. "He's been doing this double-life thing too long, it's like he's forgotten how to do stuff without a hidden agenda."

"Right," Chris said. "Speaking of that, I heard a rumor that you threatened to get Piggot fired from her job, Mister Hebert."

"I started that rumor because it's true," Danny said. "Ah, there we go. Okay, Trainwreck is taken care of, no more villainy for him. But he... oh. Oh no. Now he's devoting his attention to finding out where he came from, because he's got amnesia and no idea what his real name is."

Chris nearly missed a step. "Whoa, the dude has no limbs, no identity and no memory? No wonder he's always such a grouch, I think I'd wreck a lot of stuff if it were me too."

Taylor shot her dad a sharp look. "Okay, Dad, what's going on with that?"

He made an unhappy sound through his throat. "Enngh. So, Faultline's crew. You know how most of them are either deformed or insane, right?"

"Yeah, sure."

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "They all also have amnesia. And a tattoo or brand on their bodies, a symbol. I'll have to call Panacea later and ask her if Trainwreck has that symbol on his body. He may be just like the Faultline team. Anyway, this really isn't what we came out to talk about today, is it?"

Chris and Taylor traded a glance before the boy spoke. "Well, it's just that we heard you may call for a vote of no confidence. And the Wards, all seven of us, we talked about it and you'd have our votes against her."

Danny was taken aback. "Well, that's great to hear. But in this context, a vote of no confidence isn't actually a vote per se."

"Oh," he said. "Well, still, you'd have us backing you, one way or the other. With recent events, it would honestly explain a lot if Director Piggot was secretly a supervillain like Coil. Like, it would explain why her number-one right-hand man was actually Coil."

Danny opened the door to Fugly Bob's, and waved the two teens inside. "That may actually bear some investigation," he said. There was a delay in the conversation as they ordered at the front counter, paid and then took a seat to wait for their orders. Danny grabbed some napkins and ketchup while Taylor filled his cup and hers with soda, Chris taking a little of every flavor from the fountain and mixing them together. They sat, he checked their ticket, and he relaxed into the booth. Rats in his vicinity were eating well and finding good hiding places, profiting from his intelligence like he did from their numbers.

"So, it's like this," Chris said, leaning forward. "You're kinda the guy that tells other people how to do their jobs. The armchair quarterback. You thought that tinkers like Armsmaster and me should stay out of the field and invent weapons and stuff for our teammates. You think we should do response calls instead of patrols. You think we should stop answering to Piggot. And frankly you've rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Word is that you're kind of the outsider on your own team. But the other thing is that you're not wrong very much," he said, pausing to catch his breath. "So maybe you can tell me what I'm doing wrong," he finished. "Am I just a bad tinker? Or is something wrong? Is my power screwed up, or is it fine and I'm screwed up?"

Danny took a long drink. "Okay, that's pretty heavy, and very loaded. Tell me about your problems."

Taylor got up to go get the burgers when she saw their number come up on the lightboard. Chris leaned forward onto his elbows. "Look, I'm bad at math. No amount of tutoring helps with it, I've got a condition called dyscalculia. You can think of it like it's dyslexia for numbers. It's not really but that gets you started to understand. So, I have a lot of trouble with designs and plans. I have to measure everything a dozen times, I have to re-check my figures a dozen times. And that sort of thing gets in the way of real inspiration. I can't seem to get out of my own way. My best success so far is the Alternator Cannon, but I just bashed it together over a long weekend, scrapping parts from my other work."

Danny considered this, thinking quietly for a minute. "With your math issues, I see two possibilities. Either you try to turn the negative into the positive by having the most scrupulously planned out designs, or you just chase your intuition. The first option, you double-check everything, triple-check it, nontuple-check it, until you've got everything perfect. Other tinkers may afford to get lazy, but you'd have your condition to make sure that you never, ever take anything for granted. The second option, you just do more stuff like the Alternator Cannon, and just go with your inspirations and worry about the numbers after the fact. I'm not a hundred percent on how these things work, but it may be possible that your tinker talents don't have dyscalculia, and if you just run with your instincts you won't have any handicap at all. I recommend that you give both methods a try and see what happens. Also, I understand that most tinkers have some sort of specialty?"

"Yeah. I either don't have one," Chris said ruefully, "or my special talent is to be able to do some small amount of tinker work despite having a major learning disability."

"I don't actually believe that," Danny said, chuckling, "and I really don't think you- you... oh no."

The sirens rose and fell in a long, piercing warble. They were loud enough to wake the dead, blaring from the top of every traffic signal in the city. Street lights switched on and began strobing in sequence, guiding citizens towards the nearest safe shelter. The three heroes sat frozen, paralyzed with the enormity of that those sirens meant. Their cell phones all went off, chiming with a single text message that read "ENDBRINGER".

Danny slid out of the booth, reaching for Taylor's hand. "We've got to run," he said. It was several blocks back to the Tower, and all road traffic was currently cut off. People poured out of houses and businesses, running along with the streetlights towards their shelter. And overhead, thunder cracked across the sky loud enough to drown out the sirens for a minute, and then the rain started coming down. Everyone outside was immediately soaked through with hot, humid water that fogged the air and felt like a fever on the skin. Danny's head was spinning, thinking fast about everything that this was going to mean. Everyone knew about Endbringers, and children drilled on how to respond to attacks. Every few months when there was an attack, the news would rebroadcast their advice on how to properly evacuate and shelter down in case of an Endbringer attack. And now it was happening in Brockton Bay. He had to remember those bomb drills from his childhood, the Cold War had everyone convinced that the bombs could drop any day at any time, and the dread that had come with that. When the capes began to appear, nations stopped building nuclear weapons, but when the Endbringers appeared it was like the Cold War would never end.

By the time they reached the end of the street they were splashing through ankle-high water, the storm drains couldn't keep up with the torrential rains despite his work keeping them clear and clean. He began gathering rats, without making it obvious who they were following, moving them through alleys and culverts where he could. Clearly it was Leviathan on his way, he was always preceded by flooding rains. And tidal waves, Danny figured those were going to be the first big danger. Brockton Bay was in no way built to withstand a tidal wave.

The rushed through the crowds, some running one way and some the other as the roads divided them towards two different shelters flanking the Protectorate Tower. The guards at the front door were turning people away, shoving them to the left and right towards the shelters, repeating over and over "This tower is not a shelter, please head for the designated shelters indicated by the lights, this tower is not a shelter, please..." as they tried to keep the way clear.

Danny came at them at a run, tugging a bandanna from his pocket to tie around the bottom half of his face. Taylor tucked her head so her hair hid her face, and Kid Win pulled his hoodie up and pulled it down over his face as much as possible. The guards realized that Wharf Rat was on his way when the street was suddenly swarming with rodents, wet fur everywhere. They opened the door for the three masked figures, then went back to shoving onlookers back and away. Thousands of rats flowed into the lobby of the tower, spreading out to observe in every direction, climbing for good vantage points, while the three of them ran for the elevators.

"We've got five minutes, tops, until the rest of the Protectorate shows up," Danny said. "Costumes, and quick!"

Taylor pushed the buttons for the Ward floor and swiped her hand over the reader, then Danny did the same for the Protectorate level. And then Kid Win handed him the burger he had rescued from the restaurant during the evacuation. "Here dude," the teenage boy said, still holding the damp bag that held the other two burgers and what was left of their fries. "You're gonna be hungry by the end of this."

Danny saw them off, and hoped that everything would be okay. Taylor was a teenager, and she didn't have any powers. And what's more, her armor was geared towards aquatic situations, and if Leviathan was about then going in the water was a deathtrap. He shoved those thoughts away, knowing that if he stopped to consider then he would just grab his daughter and take her to a shelter and damned be the consequences. Piggot would kick him out of the Protectorate if he denied an Endbringer defense and hid away instead. She would take her revenge slow, and nobody would challenge her or try to stop her. But, he considered, he just worked with rats. Just rats, and those were no good against Leviathan. And Taylor had less than that, she had some fake powers that only worked in the most dangerous area where she would die instantly. What could they do to help, really?

He stepped off the elevator, and the rest of the Protectorate East-North-East was pulling on their own costumes. Triumph tossed his costume at him as he came through the door without a word, and Armsmaster was nowhere to be seen. Danny started stripping out of his wet civilian clothes and pulling on the cargo pants without a moment of modesty for the women in the room. He whisked the white mice into their cage and had them lock it tight behind them, today was not a white mice sort of day. He tugged on his mask in the elevator and was slipping his jacket on as he stepped out into the crowd.


	12. Chapter 12

In the observations deck, the alarms could still be heard, but faintly this time and it was easily covered by the hubbub of the assembled heroes and villains that were crammed into the Protectorate's Brockton Bay headquarters. The room was large and domed, shot through with huge metal pillars that stretched up, supporting the rest of the tower, but this level was mostly glass facing out in every direction, with marks on the carpet where chairs and tables had stood until just a few minutes ago. The place was filled with capes and masks, even in these circumstances they divided themselves into cliques and in-groups. He swept a couple dozen of his rats into the room, climbing the pillars for a vantage point while the vast majority waited nearby on standby.

Mouse Protector bounded his way, not in a joyous way just that it was the most efficient mode of travel for her with her enhanced energy and agility. "Good to see you again," she said, offering him a handshake. She was about as old as Danny, and today she looked like it.

"Thanks," he said. "I just want to get to work. God I hope they don't do any speeches. Time is of the essence here." His brain was buzzing with speculation and schemes, wondering how he could use his rats to help against Leviathan. Their incisors were a bit harder than iron, but he was pretty sure that Leviathan was a lot harder than that. Otherwise someone would have killed him long ago, right?

"No doubt," she said, giving him a wink. He saw the famous mischief in her eyes.

He tried to keep his breathing under control. _Okay, rats are really strong swimmers, while their stamina holds out. So, it's not necessarily like they'll all die immediately._ He was glad for the mask that kept anyone from seeing the nervousness on him. Maybe he could try something similar to his fights against Lung, using the environment to his advantage by tipping power lines onto the monster? _Nah, there's gotta be a good reason that won't work,_ he thought to himself. He could only really guess at this, since he'd never actually sat down to watch an Endbringer attack on the news since the first attack by Behemoth.

Armsmaster stood on a low dais, and raised his hands for quiet. He was in a rubber one-piece that looked like a wetsuit covered in electrodes, the sort of thing one probably wore underneath powered armor, and a mask that was just a fabric hood modeled to look like his usual helmet. "First, I'd like to thank all-"

"No speeches!" Mouse Protector bellowed out, cupping her hands as a megaphone.

"Right," Armsmaster said ruefully, running a hand through his hair. "Okay, for those that haven't done this before, we're passing out communicators. Press the top button to send a message to our central dispatcher, press the bottom button if you need help and can't speak. Press both at once for an emergency broadcast to all communicators, but only do that if it's really urgent. We need to keep those channels clear, so don't abuse the override. Now, I'm going to go armor up. Where's Wharf Rat?"

"Here," Danny said, raising a hand.

"Okay, you're on dispatch. Take the elevator, two flights up, someone will meet you there."

"Me?" he was shocked. More than shocked, terrified. He was out of his depth by a large margin. This was his first defense against an Endbringer. There were people here who had fought these things dozens of times.

"Dinah Alcott insisted. Go!" Armsmaster barked, and Danny's indecision evaporated. If Dinah Alcott said he needed to do this, he trusted the girl.

Wharf Rat turned and bolted for the elevator, and there was a PRT representative holding the doors for him. The rep wore a suit and tie and a wide-eyed look of restrained terror, and pushed the button to get them up to the desired level. "Get all the technical staff to the Protectorate floor," Wharf Rat told the PRT rep as he walked past. "Engineers, IT guys, wiretappers, signals analysts, everyone." He hit the floor and headed straight to the console, a broad desk with three screens and a modular keyboard in front of it. This was the PRT's console, much like the ones used by the Protectorate from their Hub or the Wards from their area. This one was a backup, a standby so that the PRT could administer in times of need, or for anyone that didn't have security clearance to be on the Protectorate floor. He typed fast, activating the console and started tying its network into the comm bands that were being passed around downstairs. Elevators dinged and opened, and then there were dozens of technicians standing by, staring at him. They were inches from panic. Time to project confidence. And to be glad that the mask hid his face, all he had to disguise was his voice. "Okay, this is my workstation," he said, slapping the top of the console.

"Yeah," one tech said, gesturing. "But this is just for a few people in the field, you can't handle all the comms for an Endbringer attack through here."

"No you can't," Danny agreed. "Do we have the bandwidth?"

"Bandwidth for days," the man said.

The Wharf Rat nodded. "All right. Bring me laptops, desktops, anything with a monitor and a keyboard, or a monitor or a keyboard. Everything, right now. Hook it into this console, all of it. I want God's own network and I want it in five minutes."

"How many?" one of them asked.

"This many," the Wharf Rat said, and spread his arms as his minions poured out of the walls, the corners, the floor, the vents, the doors to the bathrooms, even dropping from the ceiling tiles. The technicians jumped and ran, moving with a purpose. He sat down at the main console and started scrolling around, exploring the software of the comm bands.

 _Hello Wharf Rat_ , said a green text that intruded itself over what he was doing.

"Dragon I presume?" he said aloud towards the console's microphone.

 _The same. Normally I handle dispatch and communications, but Dinah Alcott was very insistent. And the powers that be listen very closely when she is this insistent. So I will be attending with one of my new suits instead of handling the console. This is a first, are you going to be all right?_

"Should be fine if they can get the hardware together," he said, panning the camera around. "Where are you now?" He had not been so aware that Dinah Alcott had so much say in Protectorate affairs. Or even that she spoke to them very much. But, he was aware that for all he knew and all he could hear, there was plenty going on that nobody told him about. It's not like anyone owed him an explanation of what was happening with the girl he'd rescued.

 _My suit is on its way on autopilot, I'll have to hand off this console to you before it gets to you. Just another couple of minutes._

"Has everyone already activated their comm band?" Wharf Rat asked.

 _Yes they have._

The first laptop was plugged into the router, and a connection went live. Five rats leaped to the station, while the technicians brought in the rest of the equipment. And just like the spare laptop at his office at the beginning, the rats laid their paws across the home row of the keyboard and the trackpad, typing as fast as he could with his hands, and reading even faster.

"I'm ready for the handoff," he said.

 _If you say so,_ she said. A dozen rats perched on his shoulders and the desk, staring at the massive screens filled with scrolling information. Codes for specific comm bands, information pickups, overhead maps, and much much more. He immersed himself in the information, and then began moving. The first thing he noticed was that everyone was just standing around. He had to get them organized quick, or all they'd be good for was a clumsy bench-clearing where they threw all their people at the monster and just hoped for the best.

"Rime, this is Wharf Rat. You're my only flying freezer, get out into the open and start making some icebergs out there in the ocean. Clockblocker, this is Wharf Rat. We're gonna be working real closely together today. Stay alert. Skipjack, you're my best teleporter who can carry another. You're going to be married to Clockblocker today, you guys are one unit, never apart, got it?"

"Got it," the two heroes said back. Four more computers were added to the network, he took those over as well without looking. His rats began cuing their responses in, signalling people to move one way or the other, and with each console added his response times improved.

"Clockblocker, can you freeze the ocean by any chance?"

"No, just the part that touches my hands. It's an extremely fine layer and it tends to trap my hand immediately."

"That's what I thought. So, you'll be freezing some icebergs instead. You and Skip go to the window, look out there. Rime's making some floes for you, you freeze them in place and they'll break up the tidal waves. Got it? Vista, this is Wharf Rat, are you armored?" Here was hoping. He had recommended Vista for one of the first suits of powered armor to roll off of Armsmaster's workshop, but he could never be sure which of his suggestions was going to be heard and considered and which would be disregarded out of hand. Vista in armor was important, he could not risk her if she was wearing less protection than amateur skateboarders.

"Yes sir."

He kept the relief from flooding his voice. "Good girl. Get yourself down to the beach. The first thing we're going to see is a tidal wave. You're going to shrink it. We're going to pull everyone back so there's nobody interfering with your power, you'll be at full strength. Go. Eidolon, this is Wharf Rat, I'm running dispatch and comms. Do you read?"

"Go for Eidolon," said the most powerful hero in the Protectorate, probably the most powerful cape shy of the Endbringers and Scion himself.

"Our mission today is to buy time and minimize destruction. Do I understand correctly that your powers can be anything you want, but they take a few minutes to change up?"

"Yes, Wharf Rat."

"Good then. I need you as a specific countermeasure. Hydrokinesis, as big as you can get it. Match Leviathan's water powers, any way you can. Keep me posted, when you're ready. Bitch, this is Wharf Rat. Your power works on any dog, right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I need you to not engage Leviathan. If he gets into the city, stay near him, stay ahead of him, and transform any dogs nearby."

"I won't be able to control them, I need to train them or the change makes them crazy, aggressive."

"That's fine," he said.

"No it's not, they'll get hurt."

"If you help them, they might get hurt, and they might hurt him. If you don't help them, they'll drown and die crushed in their houses. Right?"

"Right. Okay, I'll do it."

"Thank you, Bitch. Wharf Rat to Tattletale."

"Tattle here."

"Yeah, why are you down there? Get up to dispatch. Take the elevators, two levels up." Twenty consoles were connected now, more on the way.

"Wharf Rat, this is Dragon, thirty seconds out." There was a voice now, not just the text. And it was a softer, less mechanized voice than what had boomed out of the speakers of her prison-transfer unit that had dropped him off at the asylum. Still had an accent, that he was finally able to place as being Canadian.

"Thanks Dragon, welcome to Brockton Bay. Stay high, I'm piggybacking your cameras to bolster the satellite information. All hands, tidal wave is incoming. Tidal wave groups, stand by. Impact in one minute. Rime, Prefab, start pulling back to safe distance. Clockblocker, Skipjack, get those icebergs, get them now. Vista, wait until they're clear and then get ready to push your power as hard as you've ever pushed it. Everyone not assigned to the tidal wave, get out of the tower and take up ready positions. Force field projectors, be ready to push back against the water." While he had been speaking to the various heroes verbally and scrolling around manually, each of his rats was doing their parts, planting indicators to reposition the various heroes, moving the force-field wielders into a position where they could push back against tsunami, circling fliers up high and instructing them to report any sightings.

Tattletale was walking in behind him when the tidal wave rushed the shore. Twenty or more icebergs floated on the surface in the path of the onrushing wall of water, eighty feet tall at least, millions of tons of water that threatened to scour the city off the bedrock. And then the wave shrunk, half its size, a quarter. A ten-foot wall of water hit the icebergs and dissolved into a churning eddy of froth and spray, the ice refused to budge an inch and it smashed the momentum of the water. And then Vista relaxed, and the waterline swelled up by twenty feet, lapping past Prefab's breakwater and spilling over to the foundations of the buildings nearest the water, like the whole ocean expanded at once. The water was flowing back though, receding from the city.

"One down," Tattletale said, pausing at his shoulder. "What do you need me for?"

"Anything I don't see on my own," he said. "Call 'em out when you see 'em." He didn't look her way, but one of his rats turned and gave her a somber nod of camaraderie. She smirked and returned the gesture.

"We were fighting just yesterday," she pointed out.

"Today people have better things to do than make us fight each other," he replied.

"Then show me as much as you can," she said. "My power works better the more information I have." He diverted screens her way, making sure that she saw a display of the center of the action, whatever was most pertinent. If she played straight with him, he definitely wanted her to have all the tools available. He respected her power immensely, and he hoped he could trust her to the same degree because he really didn't have a choice.

"Leviathan!" screamed a dozen voices as the giant monster leaped out of the risen water. It was thirty feet tall, top-heavy and covered in scales of deep, dark green. It leaned forward from the waist to balance out the length of its tail, and a watery after-image followed after it as it crashed down on the street, rain sluicing off of its body. Asymmetrical eyes glowed from its narrow face.

"I need one good delay. Exalt, pin him down," Wharf Rat said. He was shocked at how level and steady his voice was.

"I only get one shot at this, then I have to recharge for a day," the hero replied.

"I only want one shot from you," Wharf Rat answered, already calling up Skipjack and Clockblocker. "All right guys, Exalt's gonna pin him, that's your shot. Freeze him down, but be really really careful. Nothing happens to either of you, got it? Cache, I need you three blocks east and four blocks north, there's some rusted ships there, scoop them up. Myrddin, get him there and back with all speed. I've got a marker on your wristband to guide you."

"What's going on there?" Tattletale asked, nodding at one window on the monitor.

"Evacuations. Capes with powers that aren't relevant or helpful for this scenario are taking to a safe distance," he said.

"Half my team," she mused aloud. There was a lot of potential for casualties in an event like this, and the key to minimizing them was minimizing opportunities. And both Grue and Regent were being evacuated to a safe distance. If they were up against Behemoth he might bring Grue in, his ability to dampen energy would be valuable. But against Leviathan he was just a meat shield, so Wharf Rat was steering him away. And by contracting the defensive lines, there were fewer distractions for the capes that could really help, less need for evacuations of the wounded, less need for spare hands. That made up for whatever advantage he could have gotten by sending them in. Maybe they could stall the monster for a half a minute or a couple minutes each before they died. And if he sent people to die, there would be less to fight against the next attack. He really hoped he was doing this the right way, because nobody had bothered to explain anything to him at all.

Wharf Rat was still working the communications. "Dragon, stand by ten degrees west, and wait for the opportunity. Skipjack, Clockblocker, wait for my signal... now! Okay, all primary forces pull back, assess for damage control. Dragon, containment foam on him before he rouses, as much as you can, empty the bottle. Leave the head clear though. Cache, drop all that rusted metal on top of him. Mix it in with the containment foam, we're adding mass and structure. Good deal. Everyone take ten seconds, back off. Clockblocker, freeze those ships, I want him to stay pinned as long as possible. Exalt, if you've got any juice left try to clear these clouds, the rain is one of his weapons."

"Myrddin here, I'll work on the weather."

"Do that, it'll be easier right now while he's not opposing you. Rime, get out in the ocean and give us more icebergs, if there's another tidal wave I want more than one line to stop it. Prefab, that wall you were building needs to be extended, thanks. Exalt, fall back to evacuation point, you've done your part."

"Got it."

"Wharf Rat, this is Alexandria," came an incoming transmission. "Do you have anything for us to do, or does the home team have this covered?" The tone was sarcastic and condescending. Danny felt that was a bit uncalled-for, since he was coordinating what might be the most successful Endbringer counterattack on record.

"Roger, Alexandria. Stand by ready to attack. When it unfreezes we're going to see if we can do some damage for a bit before Clockblocker re-freezes it."

"Roger, Wharf Rat," she replied.

"Armsmaster reporting ready." The signal pinged from his workshop level up in the tower.

"Good to know, friend. You've got that nano-Halberd, right?"

"Yes I do."

"Roger that then. Head down to the site and stand by to cut his head off."

"Movement!" someone shouted, as Leviathan's head jerked to the side, still reacting to the blast of wind that had flattened him immediately before Clockblocker stopped him. Legend began pouring the lasers on, carving a deep trench into Leviathan's head while Alexandria flew in close to punch it right in the face while it was held immobile.

"Armsmaster, how long?"

"Two minutes."

"Too long, get the next one," Wharf Rat said. "Dispatch, you and Clockblocker, stop him."

Dispatch and Clockblocker stepped in close, just outside the range of the thrashing, heaving head of the Endbringer and the water-echo that surrounded it, and in a blink Clockblocker had frozen the creature again. Dispatch's time powers let him get close, and Clockblocker's time powers bought them all a bit more time. Anywhere from thirty seconds to ten minutes.

"Eidolon here, my powers are charged up. What do you need?"

"I need all this rain and water gone. We've never been able to pin Leviathan down out of his element, and this is our shot. With no water he loses his after-image, his speed, almost half of his weapons."

"Roger. That just seems... a bit anticlimactic. Normally I go head to head with this guy."

"Right, but this is something that literally only you can do." The green-cloaked figure stood on the corner of the Protectorate tower, clinging to the edge of a pylon. He didn't have a flight power as usual, everything he had was going into controlling as much water as possible. Hazy duplicates of him appeared in the air around him, floating out into the sky above the city and even through the building he stood next to. Then they each turned, and flew in a separate direction, taking positions evenly-spaced around the city, hovering in place. And each of them that hovered began calling up orbs of crackling blue energy that flew out, one by one, until each of the dozens of duplicates was wielding dozens of balls of energy that spaced themselves out and stopped in the air, blanketing the city until nearly every block had an orb. And then the orbs pulsed, and the water transformed into a fine, sugarlike powder. The sandy substance slid away, manipulated telekinetically on a massive scale, streaming away and flowing down into the ocean.

Tattletale was staring at the camera feed, zooming in, replaying, panning to different angles, splicing in footage from the archives of previous Leviathan attacks. "This is weird. I .. I don't think that Leviathan is a cape. Like, not a human with powers. I don't think it was ever human, at all. I don't think it was anything, before it was Leviathan. I think it was created. Built? Designed? It mimics a living creature, but it's not. There s no weak spot, there's no organs or structure to it. The blood it spills out is just a distraction. It gets harder the deeper in you go, like the layers of an onion, each layer progressively harder, denser. No vulnerable places, no life functions to terminate. It's not an animal, it's not even a machine."

"So we just have to destroy its entire body?" Wharf Rat asked her.

"No, not... exactly. The body is just there to soak up damage. There's a core, in the deepest part of its body. The junction of the chest and neck, that's where the core is, if you can destroy that then Leviathan dies. But the layers closest to that... they're going to be insanely hard, dense. It's so hard it defies conventional physics, you won't get through it with raw force. You need an attack that defies physics as well."

"Well that's interesting, we've got someone that fits the bill," Wharf Rat said, as one of his many consoles picked out one name and directed that cape to report to the site of Leviathan's head. Now he had a plan for how to beat the Endbringer. And he did not have time to really think about what that meant.

"Wharf Rat, this is Armsmaster, standing by and ready."

"Roger that Armsmaster. When it becomes vulnerable, chop the head off. I need a clear shot down the length of its neck."

"Clear," the senior hero replied.

"Othala, Armsmaster would appreciate a boost of speed when it comes time, it'll make his job easier. All units, Scion has been sighted in West Africa, we're not looking at relief anytime soon. Pace yourselves."

Dragon circled above. The mechanical suit was not one of her most combat-heavy units, it was just the most heavily-armed one that could arrive at the city in time to help out. But even still, she felt oddly underutilized. Wharf Rat did not seem to need her primary weapons suite or close-combat capabilities. She had made sure that information was available to him, but he seemed to think her most useful asset was her aerial maneuverability and her ability to upload extensive visual and sensor data on the fight. She even, tentatively, added an entry to her file so that Wharf Rat would know that the suit was an unmanned drone, so he would know that there was no actual loss of life if she had to sacrifice the suit. Immediately she saw the notification that he had read that entry, but he made no move to adjust his tactics.

She also felt underutilized not only as a mechanical weapon, but also as an artificial intelligence. The reason that she normally handled dispatch and coordination for Endbringer attacks had a lot to do with how fast she could process information and her vast intelligence. As it was, she had little to do but fly a holding pattern, wait for instructions and think about everything she was seeing. She noticed, first idly then with interest, that Wharf Rat was operating the communications at least as efficiently as she normally did, and he was still working the kinks out and learning his way around and adding hardware. She was shackled by her creator to only ever be in one place at one time, and while she could work around that to a degree by creating dumb programs to buttress her attentions, she was deliberately hampered from multitasking to the degree that Wharf Rat was doing. She was hit with a pang of jealousy at that.

And Dragon was not the only one who noticed these developments. In the PRT files on Dragon, it was mentioned that her loyalty and obedience were absolute. Her dedication to following the orders of the PRT was unquestioned. She was the ideal choice to build and administer their inescapable super-prison, to coordinate movements and communications for the Protectorate, and to orchestrate Endbringer defenses. Years had been spent raising her to prominence in all things, keeping her just out of sight of the public so that there would be no calls for a public face for her, but still making her central to every stage of Protectorate business. And the people who noticed these things were not pleased that she was being unilaterally and brusquely shelved by what was likely the most troublesome and least loyal member that the Protectorate had. Wharf Rat's rise in status was dangerous enough, moreso if it came at the expense of Dragon. Hurried conferences were held.

Tattletale looked around the room. "Rats with computers. Computer mice. It's cute."

"I have an almost-infinite ability to multitask with them," Wharf Rat said. "It made sense to use that ability here. It frees Dragon up for fighting, whereas my rats don't have a lot of combat utility against something like an Endbringer."

"I wouldn't sell them short," the girl said. "You took down Lung with them, and he fought Leviathan to a standstill before. It's pretty clear that infinite multitasking, and the ability to spread your perceptions over a broad area, and to affect physical objects there, is actually a really strong power all by itself. Look, don't think about the rats, just think of someone that could exert telekinetic force any way he wanted to with a radius as big as yours, able to affect anything in any way with a half-pound of force, wherever it does the most good or harm. That almost sounds like an Endbringer to me."

"Good pep talk," he said. "But seriously, when this is done why don't you join the Wards? We can work together, I can organize information like nobody else and you can fill in the gaps."

"Tempting offer," she said. "Except that I like making my own schedule, and not having assholes like Piggy telling me what to do with every minute of my day. And you can't pay me enough, and someone would try to tell me what I can say and when I can't curse, and fuck that."

A blinking timer on his monitor was flashing 00:00.0, and Wharf Rat hit the microphone. "Clockblocker, what's the longest your power has ever held anything?"

"Ten minutes and three seconds," the teenaged Ward said. "Why?"

"Wharf Rat to Armsmaster, Legend, Alexandria! He's playing possum, Leviathan is awake and active!"

The three heroes cursed as they lunged forward, and the ground caved in underneath Leviathan, dropping him out from under the containment foam carapace. With a few feet of movement, the monsters was able to twist around and get its feet under it, while water from the broken sewer lines flooded around it, forming a layer on its body that moved like a watery after-image as it lunged forward.

"Humble! Sundancer! Rune!" he called out, and the backup plan his rats had put into effect kicked in. The monster stumbled as the ground gripped at it, a limited gravity effect that pinned it in place. Then the ground under Leviathan's feet lurched upwards, knocking it off-balance while lifting it into the air, and a massive ball of superheated flame flew over the rooftop, slamming fully into the Endbringer and burning away half of its body. The power of the sun itself launched into Leviathan's way, too fast to dodge with its feet pinned, and the rock itself shattered as the heat expanded its core too fast. The massive chunks of concrete dropped to the ground along with the burned remains of the monster, covered in gleaming sticky ichor and white-silver webbing that looked like alien moss on the skeleton of the gangly creature. The outer layers burned away, it looked less like a creature and more like a weird alien construct. It hit hard, its water evaporated away by Sundancer's projection, and Humble hit it again, pinning it down to the ground for a second. Its limbs were willow-thin, its tail was barely a whip anymore, and its torso and head were burned to half their thickness, like a stick figure. And it took only a second for the creature to pull its feet free of Humble's gravity effect and lunge to the side, working to attack the heroes.

But it had slowed enough that a speed-boosted Armsmaster could lunge in with his Halberd, wreathed in gray fuzzy fog, and carve through the creature's knee, severing the leg and dropping it to land on its two hands and one foot, the tail lashing before it was also severed.

"Clockblocker, Skipjack, you two watch carefully for the opportunity, we need him frozen again," Wharf Rat said.

"His powers aren't diminished at all, and he can work water while he fights as well as you can with your rats," Tattletale said. As if to illustrate her point, all the hydrants on the street blew out, and the ground ruptured as water burst through the water mains. Storm drains back up, flooding the streets, and as soon as the water was three feet deep the narrowed slip of Leviathan dropped flat to the ground and shot away, swimming with a side-to-side movement of its remaining body while the water pushed him forward even faster. The water began transforming into fine white sugary powder, faintly blue when the light hit a certain angle, but enough of it stayed liquid that the Endbringer could swim itself away.

"Dammit, this fight's getting into the city," Wharf Rat said. "That's exactly what I didn't want."

Five rats operated a trackpad while typing commands to indicate one communicator, and that wristband buzzed a second before it lit up with two arrows, one labeled "truck" the other "L". And the Wharf Rat's voice blurted out from the wristband, "Trickster! Now!"

Trickster inverted the two, teleporting the truck to Leviathan's location and vice verse, bringing the Endbringer back into reach. Legend's lasers punched into its back but did no appreciable damage. "Not on it, in front of it, burn the water to steam and pin it in," Wharf Rat called out. Legend shifted tactics, and Leviathan's attempts to swim were interrupted by a lack of water in front of it, slowing its progress. The steam evaporated the liquid and the remaining water was more powder than fluid, and Leviathan had a hard time swimming in what was essentially mud.

Dragon noted that Wharf Rat rarely moved to attack Leviathan directly; whereas normally they hit it with as many attacks as possible and only one in a hundred was effective, Wharf Rat was only launching a handful of attacks but making sure that each one counted. It was probably something he learned from fighting supervillains using only rodents. Everything he knew about fighting seemed to be about using numbers of weaker assets in creative and unpredictable ways to take down a larger, stronger, faster opponent by any means he had available. So, perhaps he was almost uniquely suited to this position. She found herself discomfited by this thought.

Then Browbeat and Campanile worked together, hurling the truck up into the air, and Trickster reversed them, the Endbringer suddenly finding itself up in the air, arcing upwards to smack into a wall. It grabbed hold with its spidery fingers and last remaining leg, but found itself wedged by a sudden burst of gravity that held it to the wall. And then Clockblocker leaned out a window, touched Leviathan on the chest and froze him in place.

"His powers aren't diminished by damage," Tattletale said again, her voice musing as she worked through the facts. "Stripping off those outer layers doesn't actually injure him at all, that form we see is just for show, just to give us something to see and fight. The real Leviathan is the core, that's where the powers come from, that's where the danger is."

"Miss Militia, this is Wharf Rat," he said, while he considered what she'd said. "I need you and your bazooka to blow up that building he's hanging onto, I don't want him to fake us out again. Skipjack and Clockblocker are already gone, fire at will. Flechette, take a post at the newsstand across the street, as soon as he starts falling I need you to fire a bolt right into the core of him, the deepest part of his body at the junction of his chest and neck. Trickster, stand by to teleport her away when that happens."

Tattletale rubbed at her head, already aware of the oncoming headache. "He gets denser and harder as you approach his core, and it defies physics. Like a neutron star or black hole. He shifts from conventional physics to high-energy physics as you penetrate deeper. And that's the source of his powers. The power source is immune to normal physics. Oh damn," she said, snapping around to stare at Wharf Rat. "His powers are still active while he's frozen in time. He's still controlling water, right now. He's still playing possum."

"Eidolon, this is Wharf Rat. Is there any chance that Leviathan is still manipulating water? Do you perceive any moving water at all?"

"Negative. No river, sewer, storm drain, not the ocean or the rain or the water in the pipes."

"What about the aquifer under downtown?" Wharf Rat asked.

Another ghostly Eidolon shot out of the hero, and flew through the air towards downtown, on a downward angle that plunged into the ground. "Eidolon to Wharf Rat, there's movement! A whirlpool, lots of movement. He's hollowing out the ground, trying to create a sinkhole. I'm working against him, but this is... this is a losing battle. I'm matching power to power against the largest-scale kinetic manipulator short of Scion himself."

"Movement!" someone called out as Leviathan dropped from out of the air. Miss Militia had blown up half the building he had been fastened to, and frozen in time as he was he had been suspended in the air until he unfroze, and dropped. The severed leg and tail were regrowing themselves, almost visibly. Flechette had a bolt fired before the monster even hit the ground, and the bolt entered his shoulder and stopped in place, piercing deeply. The creature warped in the air, spinning around to land on its spindly legs and one hand, lunging for Flechette but she and the pavement she was standing on were teleported away and replaced by Armsmaster and his Halberd. He swung the blade and it severed Leviathan's hand, the back swing biting deep and shaving layers off of the monster's head.

"Flechette, again," Wharf Rat called, but she was already ahead of him. Another bolt pierced, this one just inches to the side of the first, still probing for the vulnerable center of the monster. It spun away from Armsmaster and raced for the rooftop she stood on, even as Sundancer's glowing ball of plasma and fusion power swept in front, cutting it off. But the Endbringer leaped forward, _into and through_ the miniature sun, and came out the other side as a polished silver stick figure, running on needle-like points that were all that was left of its feet. Molten metal dripped off its frame as it sprinted through and then started climbing the side of the building, moving fast.

"Tidal wave!" came an alert, and Wharf Rat directed Clockblocker and Skipjack to start locking down Rime's icebergs, and checked to make sure that Vista was ready again.

"Be alert, now that he knows that we're not falling for his tricks, he's going to start doubling down," Wharf Rat advised. "That probably goes double for tidal waves, the ocean is his biggest weapon right now."

"I'm not sure I can keep shrinking them as hard as I did that last one," Vista responded. "That took a lot out of me, and it'll take a while to rest up."

"Do what you can without straining," Wharf Rat said. "If you can cut them in half, you'll do us a huge favor."

"You make that look easy," Tattletale said, slumping back in her chair. "By the way, I think I'm all used up. If I try helping anymore, the headache will knock me out faster than I can get you any answers. Guess I should get evacuated now."

"Or keep me company," Wharf Rat said. "Just sit back, turn off, and help me watch for anything I don't see on my own. Just because I see through hundreds of eyes doesn't mean I couldn't use another perspective, for its own sake."

She let her eyes sag shut, and massaged her temples. "You make that look easy too. How do you do that? Is that a Thinker power?"

"Do what?" Wharf Rat said while he navigated the process of teleporting Sundancer and Flechette and Traveler and Armsmaster out of danger, keeping Leviathan scrambling after targets that he couldn't reach. One of Parian's giant stuffed animals jumped it from the side, and when the Endbringer slashed it open with its whittled-sharp hands, the interior of the plush creature exploded out with loops of thread and twine, some thick and sturdy and some of it almost invisibly fine. The Endbringer was still just as strong and just as fast as when it had first arrived, but the damage had cut it down to a fraction of its weight and mass, and the threads lifted him up clear of the ground and denied him purchase and leverage. He started cutting the threads to free himself, but Alexandria grabbed one arm and slowed his progress, grappling him to immobilize.

"Talk to people. You say the right things, you help them and help yourself. You're here, ready to interrogate me while my power's blown out so you can get more information out of me than I get out of you, and you do it in such a way that I actually don't mind hanging out here with you."

Wharf Rat managed the consoles with the rats alone and turned towards her, cocking his head to the side. "You think I'm going to interrogate you? I didn't think I'd done anything to give you that impression."

"You're doing it now," she pointed out.

"I'll try not to," the hero said, turning in his seat back to the console. "Hey, can someone get this girl an icepack or something? And the strongest painkillers we've got that won't hurt her." One of the techs shrugged and went off to look for icepack and aspirin. "So, anyway, the best way I can think of to not interrogate you is to answer your question. I talk to people, all the time." He thought about the union, all the networking and the interviews and the negotiations and persuasion. "It's my job, my hobby, my life. I've gotten better at it recently, a lot more honestly. Part of that is that my rats can hear heartbeats and can smell emotions, so I know a lot about people that they don't know that I know. That makes it easier. And even when I'm not using them, just what I've learned about people from the rats has made it easier to understand them. And honestly, the big issue is just about caring enough to try. Lots of capes don't get out of their own heads and into anyone else's, it's kind of an occupational hazard. I'm the exception, and I guess I'm just lucky."

"Not using my power, just my own brain," Tattletale groaned, "I'd guess that your trigger event was about helping other people, and not about trauma to yourself."

"It was some of both," he said casually. In his peripheral vision he saw her accept an icepack and a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water. "Hang on a second. Eidolon, where are we at with that aquifer?"

"Holding my own, mostly. I'm not making progress, but I've got him almost at a standstill. If this goes on too long I will lose, but I can lose slowly. Nobody else has ever lost slowly against these guys."

"I'm evacuating the shelters in that area just in case, but I hope we don't need that," Wharf Rat said back to the world's strongest hero. "Let me know if you start slipping or if he does, okay?"

"Like that," Tattletale said. "Eidolon's a butthead. He's arrogant and pushy. You've got him cleaning up the collateral damage and feeling good about it. He's always in these fights setting the sky on fire or throwing black holes or growing to giant sizes to attack the Endbringers as only he can, and you're having him play second-fiddle to a local Wards team. And he's not complaining, is he? You've got city team leaders ferrying people around, you've got villains handling the primary defense, and morale is high. Look at them."

"They're winning, and that has a huge impact," Wharf Rat said. "The best PR in the world is a good track record for getting results, as I've had to tell our own PR guy." Clockblocker froze the threads that held up the Endbringer, locking him on place without rendering him invulnerable. "Whoa, I didn't tell him to do that," Danny said, leaning forward. "I told him to freeze Leviathan, but he got the threads instead, and it worked. Holy cow it worked. Flechette, you've got at least thirty seconds of grace here. Perforate that core!"

"You're about to kill an Endbringer without Scion's help," Tattletale said. "That's the kind of results that look good on your track record. Wait, you Protectorates have a PR guy?"

"Yeah. It was his idea for me to use mice. Little cute white mice. Said my image was too gritty and threatening," Wharf Rat said. "Flechette, set down the crossbow. Alexandria, go find me an I-beam, something big. Parian, more threads, layer them on. Clockblocker, freeze each layer as they go on. They won't all fail at the same time, and you can refreeze any that time out. Parian, don't cover the core area, stay away from his neck and torso, just get the head and limbs."

Alexandria came flying in carrying a giant slab of construction steel hefted over her shoulder, with Flechette clinging to the beam with both hands and her legs wrapped around it. Alexandria flew up in front of Leviathan, and braced the steel beam against his chest, ready to push. Flechette indicated a couple inches upwards and to the right, and then she laid her hands on the steel when it hit the proper position. Alexandria pushed, and the beam slid in right on target.

The silvery figure of Leviathan's inner layers stopped in place, and then began swelling, bloating. "Ohshit," Wharf Rat said, as his sensors registered the temperature of the swelling body. "It's a nuke! Run!" he bellowed on all channels. He could only sit helplessly, scrambling to send instructions in the second or two before the hyperdense layers of the Endbringer's inner layers collapsed on themselves, broke down in a storm of internuclear forces that boiled to superheated plasma. The inner pressure struggled against the superstrong materials that surrounded them, converting them to pressurized plasma. Hard radiation began bleeding through, gamma rays and cosmic radiation bursting out through the skin of its body as the layers of its body melted, softened, stretched, and finally ruptured.

In the seconds that the creature's self-destruction took, Flechette managed to climb up the I-beam and duck behind Alexandria, grabbing the heroine's cape and wrapping it half-around herself. At the time that the explosion went off, the cape was exempt from physics, and its quarter-inch of fabric was the equivalent of an infinitely-thick layer of lead shielding. But the cape was not full-body protection, and Flechette dropped to the ground unconscious. Skipjack teleported back with Clockblocker, this time without Parian, and Clockblocker froze Flechette in place. Alexandria hung in the air, squirming a finger in her ear like she was trying to get rid of a ringing sound.

"The whole damn Boardwalk is gone," Tattletale said, checking the wide-angle cameras.

Wharf Rat was scrambling for other sensors and other readouts. "Eidolon, anything you can bring up to scrub radiation out would be good right about now, I've got lethal levels over a wide area. Panacea, I need you at the blast site, we've got someone badly wounded or dying, frozen in time for a short period of time. PRT personnel, anyone that can find me radiation countermeasures or radiation-poisoning cures, get those out of storage and stand by to pass them out. Vista, recall from the beach and start condensing the affected area so we can scrub the radiation out faster. Rime, I've got fires near the blast, I need you to put those out. Humble, that may be radioactive ash, I need it out of the air."

"And still no sign of Scion," Tattletale said bitterly. "Thanks a lot, you glorious golden god."

Wharf Rat stared at her, then looked back at his console and pushed a code and the open channel key. "Eidolon, this is Wharf Rat. I want to first of all thank you for everything, and also I have to ask you a hypothetical question for future reference: do you think it would be possible for you to give yourself the power to communicate with Scion?"

"I... I have no idea. I suppose I could try, the next time."

"Keep in mind that next time may well be eight months down the line, if there's only two Endbringer their schedule should slow down."

"I... that's right. It's just Behemoth and the Simurgh now, three attacks every two years instead of three per year," he said, his voice seemingly swamped with relief and awe.

Tattletale groaned, and started pushing herself to her feet. She moved like she was sixty and not sixteen. "Well, the attack is over, and that means the truce is over. I'll be on my way, and tomorrow we can all go back to fighting each other."

"Why, do you think we're done?" Danny asked. "I mean, I grant we're past the hard part, but people are still in shelters, there's still danger out there, the Triumvirate are still in the city. I think you can hang out for a couple more hours. Do you want to split the rest of this burger?"

Tattletale slumped back into her seat. "Yeah, you're right. I don't need to go walking through a nuclear winter on an empty stomach."

"Wharf Rat, this is Alexandria," barked one communicator. "I never got a casualty listing."

"Until Flechette comes out of stasis so Panacea can work on her, I don't have a listing," Wharf Rat said.

"Beg pardon?"

"I mean we have presently no deaths, one major injury, and a smattering of minor injuries."

Alexandria's voice came through slowly. "Do you mean to tell me that we just killed Leviathan, an Endbringer, in Brockton Bay, with one hero in serious condition, no deaths, no civilian deaths, and acceptable degrees of property damage?"

"Yes ma'am," Danny Hebert confirmed. "You wanna get the first round of beers tonight?"

They waited several seconds, but Alexandria did not reply. "Okay, so that's that," Danny said. He checked the windows in front of him. "Hmm, radiation's getting cleared up. Hopefully this won't be a radioactive wasteland by nightfall. Okay, Flechette's life signs are back, she's out of stasis. She's in bad shape, but Panacea's right here, helping her out. It's in her hands now, and there's nobody better for this." Wharf Rat started recalling heroes from the evacuation point. It turned out that Grue could nullify swaths of radiation almost as well as Eidolon, and the work sped up. The other heroes were wandering around, talking in low voices, shocked and almost dismayed.

"Armsmaster, this is Wharf Rat," he said into the comms.

"Go for Armsmaster," the man said back.

"Earlier you were going to make a speech, but we didn't have time. I think we've got time now. Do you want an open channel?"

"Give me a minute to compose my thoughts, and I'll be back with you."

"Roger. Parian, this is Wharf Rat. Your vitals are off, are you all right?"

"I'm okay, I'm just.. rattled. Processing. I always said that if I got powers I'd help fight the Endbringers. And this... this was so much."

"My first time too," he admitted. "But you were great today. You came through right when it counted, and today you did just as much to fight and kill Leviathan as Alexandria herself. Your name is going to go down in history books, Parian. You are always going to have that."

"Th- thank you. I think I need to be alone for a bit."

"Sure thing. And thank you again. Armsmaster, you ready?"

"Put me through," came the hero's voice. Wharf Rat hit the button for all-call, and let the Armsmaster's voice carry through to every one of the wrist communicators. The voice was solid and unshaken, "Today, you did the impossible. We did the impossible. We did what even Scion never did. The world has one less Endbringer, one less threat. The monster that killed Kyuju, Newfoundland, is dead. And now that we know how, we can turn our eyes to Behemoth, to the Simurgh. We can find a world that is safer, better, than it was. All of you, here together. Some of you are known as rogues. Some of you are officially villains. But today you did more good than most people can ever do in a lifetime. If you will let me, I'll call all of you heroes. It is going to take days, weeks, for the world to realize what this means. But all of us here, I can say the words I've always wanted to say after every Endbringer attack: we won."

"Not bad," Tattletale said. "Should've called out the big heroes today, Flechette and Clockblocker and Parian."

"It's easy to say that," Wharf Rat said. "But honestly Eidolon played a huge role when he took the water away. And Vista for the same reasons. Skipjack manage to get Clockblocker everywhere he needed to be, without him the boy would still be on the beach. Most of the overview intel I got was from Dragon and Legend. Humble made the difference between winning and losing at least four times. And every part of the strategy that gave us the win, the kill, came from you."

"Strategists don't take credit," Tattletale said. "Or else you and Dinah would get the lion's share."

"Kind of you to say," Wharf Rat said. "Check it out, Flechette's vitals are stabilizing, strengthening, it looks like Panacea's got this under control. Wharf Rat to Clockblocker, you're still there with Flechette, right?"

"Roger."

"How's it looking, I don't have eyes on that corner."

"The bleeding's stopped, the bruising is receding, and she's on the mend. Panacea's got her hands full, can't answer her comms, but she says that the brain damage has been mitigated, the heart and lungs are repaired, and she's working on liver and kidneys next. This could take a while, there are massive crush injuries from close-range hyperbaric blast, as well as huge doses of lethal radiation. I'm on site to pause things anytime Panacea needs a break. We could be here for a couple hours before this is done, but she's gonna make it."

"Thanks Clockblocker. Say, I can see that Parian's wristband is close by, she seems to be hanging around. Do me a favor and gently prod her towards joining the Protectorate. Would ya?"

"Yeah, sure thing Rat."

The door whisked open and Director Piggot stepped off the elevator with two men at her sides. "Wharf Rat? Please turn off that console and come with us. There's questions that need to be answered."

Tattletale looked around, her pain leaving her almost groggy. "What fresh hell?"

Danny Hebert stood up with a sigh. He had seen this coming, heard the planning, but it was too well-executed for him to stop it without screwing up the fight against the Endbringer. "A nuclear explosion just erupted in an American city. Someone has to answer for this." He stepped forward and the guards flanked him. They did the courtesy of at least not handcuffing him.

 _Author's Note: This is the point where Wharf Rat continuity starts to really diverge from Worm continuity, obviously. I do hope that by now anyone who has read as far as this trusts me enough with where this is going. As this story has been written (the first draft is currently on about chapter twenty-two) one of the most fascinating things for me has been how this story alternately parallels the original; and how it diverts from it dramatically._


	13. Chapter 13

"You know that I ran my rats through the whole building," he said. "Just in case I needed to see or hear anything." He walked between the guards, with the Director behind. "And I heard you talking, you know. The whole time I was up there coordinating the defense, I heard you and your managers discussing that I would not be allowed to come out of this as a hero, no matter what."

She smirked. "Is that what you heard? I'm pretty sure you just heard us discussing that a dirty bomb went off in an urban environment, and that makes you a terrorist who has used weapons of mass destruction against your own nation. That will get you sentenced to Baumann for certain," she said. "Unless you fight back or run. Then you get killed trying to escape."

"But this is an Endbringer defense," he pointed out. "All differences are put aside, and all options are on the table during Endbringer events. It's the Endbringer Truce. You can't prosecute me for anything right now, especially since literally nobody knew that Endbringers have a nuclear failsafe."

"The Endbringer Truce is for capes," she shot back. "I'm not a cape."

He turned to look over his shoulder at the shorter woman. "Seriously? We've had our differences, but now you're looking to kill me after I just coordinated the most effective Endbringer defense ever?" His face registered the naked surprise he felt.

"Careful, you might accidentally resist," she sneered, and prodded him to keep walking.

He shook his head. "You really think it's more important to assert your authority than it is to defeat the Endbringers. Amazing." He mentally counted how many times he had threatened her authority and position. If he had badly underestimated how much that affected her

"Endbringers only come around every few months, and only one city at a time," Piggot snapped. "But humans have to worry about you every day, in every city, blending into every crowd, attacking with no warnings. If an Endbringer attacks, it might wreck enough of a city that people have to move elsewhere. But when I assert my authority, human authority, over you capes, that's about the survival of the species. Because if you wannabe gods are allowed to take power, unpowered humans become a slave race, second-class citizens."

"Oh, come on, we're the heroes," Wharf Rat said.

"Heroes, villains, if you get a chance at power there's no difference," Piggot said. "Every one of you is unstable because of your trigger events, and -"

" _Tagg to Director Piggot!_ " burst a voice through the intercom. " _You're broadcasting! Don't say anything!_ "

Piggot looked in disgust at Wharf Rat, then at his hands folded together, pressing the two buttons to override all other chatter and broadcast to all other comm bands. Every member of the Protectorate had heard Emily Piggot call them all monsters and wannabe gods, and seeing them as no different than the villains they pursued. He took his hand off the buttons, and the broadcast ended.

The elevator in front of them opened, and Alexandria, Legend and Eidolon stepped off. Behind them came Armsmaster, Narwhal, and Mouse Protector. Wharf Rat looked over at them all. "I think I'll be calling for a vote of no confidence and asking for a procedural audit of this facility," he said to Armsmaster.

Legend looked over at the two PRT security guards that were escorting Wharf Rat with Piggot. "Take a hike," he advised them, nodding back the way they came. The two men looked to their director for instructions, but she did not spare them a glance and they walked away hastily.

"What is the meaning of this?" Alexandria demanded.

Wharf Rat looked from her to the other three members of the Triumvirate that headed up the Protectorate. "Ever since I exposed her assistant director as a supervillain, she has been punishing me in any way she could and keeping me busy with public appearances instead of letting me investigate actual criminals and corruption," he said. "The supervillain in question was the only other survivor of the Nilbog massacre, and I think their collusion dates back to that bloodbath."

Piggot's mouth dropped open. "That is a gross mischaracterization of what has happened! This man has undermined my authority at every turn and attempted to turn the Protectorate heroes against me! This is just the latest gambit in his campaign against me, and he has the audacity to exploit an Endbringer attack like this!" she belted, looking ready to punch the skinny hero.

Eidolon sighed. "If we don't fire her, right now, then no member of the Protectorate will ever trust the PRT again," he said, looking over at the other two. "We will lose everything. Right now he's one of the biggest heroes in Protectorate history, the tactician that put it all together. And she was broadcast threatening to kill him off-the-books and calling the Protectorate a bigger threat than the Endbringers. If she has a job an hour from now, then we will lose every Endbringer defense for the rest of our lives."

Legend just stared at the woman, as if trying to figure out how someone could grow so petty, so hateful, and so blinded by their own vindictive spite. He glanced over at Alexandria, who nodded and walked away, opening the communications headset from her helmet and murmuring into the mouthpiece.

Wharf Rat stepped to the side, near Armsmaster. "How does everything look out there?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

"Like a lynch mob," Armsmaster said. "You know that you've turned the Protectorate upside down, right? I have no idea what's going to happen with all of this."

Danny sighed. "Neither do I. But I'm hoping that it's something better than we've had."

The communicator bands on their wrists beeped, and Tattletale's voice came through the speakers, sounding like she was at the end of the longest day of her life. "This is Tattletale filling in for Wharf Rat," she said. "I just received an official communication from Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown of the PRT. Director Emily Piggot is officially terminated, with an investigation pending to explore criminal charges."

Legend led the fat woman away, and the atmosphere in the hall lightened by several tons once she was out of sight. Eidolon clapped Danny on the shoulder. "Sorry about your city. That nuke right at the coast was bad, but I think it's all the water damage that's going to really suck to fix up. And, that sinkhole at the aquifer. I did what I could, but there's going to be a lot of foundation damage and some subsidence."

"We need a monument," Mouse Protector said. "Something that people come to see. Tourism is gonna be nuts after this."

Wharf Rat nodded absently. "Does anyone know if Trickster is still around? I'd like to talk to him about some stuff."

"Vanished," Armsmaster said, stifling a guffaw. "But you've got bigger problems, my friend."

"Like what?" Danny asked, his voice carrying plenty of suspicion at Armsmaster's suddenly gleeful tone.

The armored man grinned widely. "I am reviewing some material here on my visor. It turns out that with Piggot fired in disgrace, all of her high-level appointments are suspended from stepping into the Director's position. So the position is going to default to an acting director comprised of the highest-clearance PRT representative in the city that was not appointed by the previous director."

Wharf Rat could tell that the other man was drawing this out, loving the suspense, but he himself was ready to cut to the chase. "And who is that highest-clearance PRT representative?"

"How do you like the sound of Acting Director Glenn Chambers?" Armsmaster chortled.

"Oh fuck me."

* * *

"And so it is my _privilege_ ," Dauntless grinned widely, "to introduce to you all, with _great_ pleasure, the man you knew as Wharf Rat. Ladies and gentlemen, some applause now for the Druid of Brockton Bay!"

Danny stepped out onto the stage from behind the curtain. The original sketches for the Druid costume had been rather toned-down, not too much unlike his outfit of hoodie and trenchcoat. But somehow between then and now, it had morphed into a full-on cloak that settled low over his shoulders and draped around his body. Behind him, framed for the dramatic photo angle, was the new monument, a spire of blue-gray ceramic that glittered icily as it speared up from the crater that Leviathan had left behind. His new mask was rigid, with the wood grain pattern laid into it that matched the plates of his breastplate and the greaves of his boots. It was all surprisingly lightweight, but lightweight could still be bulky and unwieldy.

"Greetings friends and visitors," Danny said, reading Acting Director Chambers' speech that was displayed in his heads-up display. "I come to you today to pay homage to this great monument to what this city has accomplished, and also to unveil myself as the Druid of Brockton Bay. The truth is that for quite a while I have been hiding the full range of my powers, only showing my control over rodents, rather than the creatures of the city and the forces of nature," he said. The tacky lies stuck to his tongue, the self-aggrandizing posturing left him nauseous. But on cue he raised a hand and a stream of cardinals and bluejays flew past, whirling around him before dispersing through the trees nearby. A drift of wind brought a shower of flower petals over the assembled crowd, a dramatic gesture borrowed from Japanese culture. And in the distance dogs began howling, harmonizing as they serenaded the city. "But after we have defeated one of the three great evils of the world, it did not seem fitting to answer to a name so gritty as 'wharf rat'. The moment called for something grand, and so now I show you as I am, the Druid. I stand ready to defend the city, and its people, at the sides of my teammates. And I will not be taking leadership from Dauntless, and the first one of you to suggest otherwise is going to wish he didn't," Danny said, to a ruffle of laughter through the crowd.

"Off script! Off script!" Glenn hissed in his ear.

"Anyway, I will be providing a more thorough introduction of myself soon, and meeting a great many of you, but today let us just focus on the win, the victory, the monument," he said, turning and gesturing grandly. He felt silly, but with the cloak and armor he had to overdo every gesture for it to look right. The last time he had been introduced to the press as a hero, the crowd had been made of whatever reporters and photographers came by, plus the normal crowd of look-sees visiting the Protectorate Tower. Today, the crowd swelled in the thousands, cheering and waving.

Under Glenn's orchestration, the Protectorate heroes posed for pictures in front of the monument in nearly every configuration. First, just the Protectorate East-North-East, then a wide panoramic shot with everyone who participated in the fight against Leviathan. Stand-ins and body doubles were used to represent the villains, grinning just as widely as the heroes. After that it began to winnow down to just those who fought the most directly or the most effectively. The last few shots were down to Legend, Eidolon, Alexandria, Parian, Clockblocker, Skipjack, Vista, Flechette, Tattletale's stand-in, Dinah Alcott, and Druid. The second to last shot was Alexandria, Parian, Clockblocker, Flechette, Tattletale and Druid. And the last was the only one he was asked to step out of along with Tattletale, leaving only the four people who had delivered the death blow from point-blank range. Hundreds of camera flashes went off for each pose, capturing them from every angle. Danny was already grateful for anti-glare compensation on his helmet's vision systems.

While the last few pictures were taken, Danny found himself in front of Eidolon, standing somewhat awkwardly in the midst of his colleagues and fellows. Danny stuck a hand out, and made sure his voice held a smile in it even through the mask. "It was a pleasure to work with you," Danny said. "I hope we don't have to wait for another one of these before we can work together again."

Eidolon took the hand and shook. "Likewise," he said. Up close he was less imposing than on television. "Maybe we could convince you to leave Brockton Bay and work for us in one of the major teams?"

"It takes me a while to really cultivate the rat population that I thrive on," Danny said apologetically. "I do best where I've been established. Maybe you could visit us every so often?"

"Or I could take you on a tour of major cities, and you could scoop their rat populations up to bring back with you," Eidolon suggested. "I'm sure nobody would miss them, and you'd be well weaponized."

Wharf Rat leaned back, floored by the idea. "Hmm, that could work out really well, honestly. I'd jump on it, but somehow I think my new director may not be thrilled with the idea."

Eidolon chuckled. "From what I've heard, you don't take instructions from PRT directors anyway."

Danny laughed with him. "Yeah, I'm going to have to get used to that sort of ribbing, I've definitely earned myself a reputation as a troublemaker."

Mouse Protector leaned against him and draped an arm over his shoulder. "And that just turns me on even more, big guy. Unfortunately, you've dropped the rodent motif, so we can't do any more supercool teamup missions."

"Wasn't my call," Druid said, "I never liked this 'druid' identity, it got started because of a miscommunication. Oh, my manners! Mouse Protector, this is Eidolon. Eidolon, Mouse Protector."

"We know each other by reputation," Eidolon said stiffly.

Mouse Protector clutched her hand to her heart. "Eidolon's heard of me!" she gasped, her eyelids a-flutter. "I've got warm fuzzies! You're the big cheese, and I'm just squeaking by in the Midwest. If you've got any advice, I'm all ears!"

"She's more tolerable than she seems," Druid said, unflinching. It was easy to keep a straight face behind the mask, and for his sort of dry humor that was an asset.

The woman jabbed him in the side with her elbow. "Ow. Armor, right. Stop being mean, you rat fink. But hey, have you guys noticed the bloom of young love over there?"

Druid followed her discreetly-pointing finger. "Oh, Parian and Flechette? Do you really think so?"

"Dude, I don't have rat senses, but I can smell the hormones boiling off those two," Mouse Protector said, elbowing him again. "Ow."

Eidolon looked uncomfortable, even through a full-face mask and a hooded cloak with its own inner glow. "Love isn't just hormones, you know."

"Sure, but young love is," she replied smoothly. "I'm gonna go meddle," she said, and detached herself from Druid to slip through the light crowd towards the two young women.

"We should get Flechette to recruit Parian to the Wards," Eidolon said idly.

Druid shook his head. "She's too old, but maybe Protectorate," he said, remembering the fashion design student who was nearing her graduation. In her costume it was easy to picture her in the Wards, dressed in her porcelain mask and blonde ringlet wig that reminded him of Shirley Temple. And her old-time doll dress, with petticoats and lace ribbons. The woman was very short, adding to the illusion of youth, but Danny was certain that a relationship between a twenty-two-year-old and a sixteen-year-old was not terribly appropriate. He made a mental note to look in on that later and discuss it with Parian.

"Oh, Legend is calling me," Eidolon said. "Take care, Druid."

"Thanks, you too," he said lamely to the most powerful hero in the Protectorate. And then he turned the wrong way, and fell into a pocket of reporters who wanted his picture and his statement.

* * *

"I'm booked all day with interviews and public appearances and statements and photo shoots!" Danny said, slapping the sheet of paper down on the director's desk. "Seriously, man, you've got to let me do my job!"

Glenn tapped his steepled fingers together. "Look, in the wake of what happened, your job is to make the Protectorate look as good as possible. We need the publicity, we need to capitalize on the win. You've said plenty of times now that the best PR is a winning record, but my friend you need to learn how to use that winning record, make it work for you."

Danny paced away. He wasn't wearing his full armor, but rather the lightweight version made of stretch cotton and fiberglass armor. It looked similar, but it wore much more comfortably and it was far easier to put on and take off. The cloak still swirled dramatically anytime he moved around too much though. "The city's suffering, Glenn. Leviathan tore things up, and emergency services aren't equipped to deal with it. He ruptured all the storm drains and about half the sewer lines. There's human sewage open to the air in the Docks, trash is piling up, and you've got me reading scripts like this was actually going to save lives. Me being on the streets is going to save lives, Glenn."

Director Chambers shook his head. "Soon, sure. We've got a few days before things get too serious, and we have to strike while the iron's hot. This publicity is the kind of thing that changes the world, Druid."

"Killing Endbringers changes the world," Danny shot back. "Publicity just changes how people perceive it. And if you'd rather believe in an illusion than- hang on a tick. Illusion. Glenn, can a hologram give an interview while I go do some really useful work?"

"A hologram?" the man repeated back, adjusting his tortoiseshell glasses.

Danny nodded. "Yeah, I've got a device from Leet that lets me project myself into holograms, lets me see and hear and speak through them."

"That seems disingenuous," Glenn said, frowning. "When people sit down for an interview, they expect a human connection and your full attention, not just a smoke and mirror trick. We owe the press more respect than that."

Danny blew out a laugh of disbelief. "You've got me lying about what my powers are, Glenn, you created a whole new persona just to fool people with sleight-of-hand tricks. And at this point you're shooting down ideas that can save lives because of a personal respect for human-interest journalists."

Glenn rocked forward, his stomach bunching onto the desk as he moved. "Now hold on. The decision to create the Druid persona was tactical. If your enemies do not know your powers, they can't plan for your powers. And we've gotten Armsmaster to beef you up, given you dozens of capabilities you didn't have. We expanded you way past the Wharf Rat persona."

"You and I both know that you made this pick because of how it plays in Peoria," Danny shot back. "You never liked the rat angle, you've always wanted to distance us from that. You thought it was seedy and gritty. You like bold, dramatic, iconic looks. You want me to look like Dauntless or Triumph, and the more attention I draw the more emphasis you put on that iconic look. Look, people are going to start getting sick. We have plague conditions in this city. And the rat-controller is exactly what you need to keep from tipping the city into a plague pit. Would you at least look at the potential for negative publicity if Brockton Bay turns septic?"

Glenn leaned back, sighing. "You're really determined on this, aren't you?"

"Fuck yes."

"And can you give a real interview by hologram?"

"I can."

The fat publicist grunted unhappily. "Then I guess we can start getting you some patrols. Covertly."

"The Docks would be low-profile," he suggested.

Glenn sighed and rolled his eyes. "Yes, fine, do it. Now shoo on out of here, I'm busy!"

Danny walked out, and as soon as he was clear of the door Glenn's army of assistants bustled back in, submitting their work for his approval. Speeches, soundbites, decorating, costuming, merchandising, all of it was almost right and needed just a suggestion from the main man.

That afternoon, when rats came boiling out of the storm drains and alleys and crevices, the citizens of the Docks were initially spooked. But when the creatures began acting with a single mind, the mood lightened dramatically and immediately. The rats swarmed into open garbage bags and cans, eating anything food-based, before they could start turning into rotted messes full of germs and miasma. They aggressively killed cockroaches and wasps and anything else that could pose a continuing risk to the people. They worked together to clear blockages from the storm drains so that the water levels would drop, and dragged piles of newspapers out of abandoned firetrap houses and used them to sop up puddles so that the mosquitoes wouldn't breed in them.

And all the while the Druid avoided the public eye and rode through the storm drains, slow and easy, taking the time to do a thorough job everywhere he went. And in the cargo hold of his buggy, a few rats sat around a touchscreen tablet and manipulated the controls for a simulacrum of Druid on the other side of the city. The hologram was being projected by a small bluebird that Armsmaster had built, and it let the Druid appear and disappear at will. He answered the reporter's trite and predictable questions, while shifting position and gesturing in a natural way. And nobody was any the wiser, as long as he had a good excuse not to shake anyone's hand.

By the end of the first afternoon his rats were so stuffed full and so exhausted that he had to tuck them away someplace safe and set their breeding cycles off, then ride off to find a fresh batch of rodents to pick up the work. He worked like that for days, increasing the rat's metabolism so they would eat more and work harder, while he repaired the damage that Leviathan left behind. And while he was out, he kept his rats alert for anything that might be the Undersider's headquarters. He wasn't sure, but he was willing to take a chance that discovering the Undersiders by accident when he was not snooping for them particularly, wouldn't violate his promise to Tattletale.

And at the end of his day, he would return to the Tower and crash right the hell out, squeezing in eight hours before he had to wake up for his next public appearance. He only occasionally got a break to catch a meal, but at least Taylor was out of school and he could chat with her over the in-helmet communications whenever either of them chose to.

"Okay, next one: the Empire Eighty-Eight."

"Oh, tough one. Okay, I'd first make sure that Rune and Kaiser were in close proximity at all times. Her thing is massive telekinesis against things she's touched, so she's good at those giant floating boulders, some for her to ride on and some for her to attack with. He can manifest swords and blades from any inanimate object. So, picture two massive slabs of concrete smashing into each other, dropping dozens of hundred-pound chunks, that then all turn into spiked boulders as they fall. That one trick by itself would eliminate most hero teams," Taylor said.

"Oh, very nice. Oh, and having Othala add superspeed to Hookwolf. He's nearly unstoppable as it is, but she could get rid of that 'nearly'," Danny shot back.

Taylor hmmed at that thought. "But Othala is the team's weak spot, as you demonstrated. They would need to shore her up before they make any major plans around her. She either needs to start wearing armor like Kaiser, or finding some other way to protect herself."

"She could hide behind Menja's shield," Danny said. "Or Fenja. Whichever has the shield, I really don't remember. But when she's fully grown, that shield is ten feet tall, they could just build a little cubby for her back there with some seatbelts. And then she's mobile, protected, and can be brought to any of the teammates at a moment's notice."

"Really? A cubby on the back of a shield? I would think that Crusader was the natural pick. He's got shields, can fly, and can be anywhere at once," Taylor said. "Or, check this out, getting Crusader to air-drop Fog into place, making him even more mobile. His big liability is his movement speed."

"Not bad at all," Danny replied. "But I'd rather suggest that Krieg get in there to help, since he can lower air resistance and speed Fog up considerably."

"You just keep steering away from Crusader and trying to find other ways to make up the difference," Taylor said. "What's up with that?"

Her father paused before he replied. "He's unreliable. If the main guy takes a hit, all the clones vanish at the same time. He's really useful, but you shouldn't hinge too many tactics on one guy that can be neutralized like that."

"Makes sense. Okay, next round: the Travelers!"

"First things first," Danny said. "Full matching costumes. I mean full-on black bloc with this thing. Smaller members wearing bulkier costumes so that everyone is indistinguishable. Trickster can swap people's positions, so don't make it easy for your enemy to know which of you they're fighting."

Taylor thought for a second. "They need to work harder at getting their powers coordinated. Ballistic is powerful with his ability to turn things into projectiles, and Sundancer is a very powerful but limited pyrokinetic. Now, we know that he could just launch enemies into her fireball and kill them, but he's not willing to kill. But still, if he started carrying water balloons and using those, he could create sudden bursts of extremely high pressure steam, that's a neat trick. Not to mention, water balloons would be a nice nonlethal ammunition for him to use."

"Not to mention maneuverability. Consider this four-part combo: Genesis is in a form that looks just like her teammates but is heavily armored or very durable. Trickster lines her and Ballistic up side by side. He launches her, maybe as a weapon, maybe just launches her to get her some distance and room to maneuver. Then Trickster swaps Genesis out for Sundancer or himself, someone more vulnerable who needs lots of visibility. Or if you're up against something tough enough, throw Genesis and then swap her and Ballistic so he is right next to the enemy, and have him launch them directly."

"Nice one, dad. Or just have Ballistic launch Trickster way up into the sky, and have him switch his position for the enemy, let them fall back to ground the hard way."

They had some weird conversations.

After a week of hard work, the Docks were very nearly cleared out and cleaned up. And that's when Danny got a phone call from Glenn while he was out on his rounds. "Druid, this is the Director," Glenn said. He finally sounded comfortable introducing himself that way.

"Druid here," Danny said, while hundreds of his minions ate their way through comestible garbage to keep the bug populations down and reduce the chance of spreading disease, as well as reducing the bulk of garbage for the city to haul away when services were restored and the streets were repaired. Every street on the east side of the city was still split down the middle, ruptured when Leviathan yanked the water mains and storm sewers upwards against the concrete.

"I've been getting some phone calls from our donors, and they'd like you to send your helpers over to their neighborhoods as well," Glenn said. "Shearsea and Pasture Green, specifically."

"If our donors had their way they would leave the outskirts of the city to fend for themselves and fester in filth," Danny said, his voice mild. "They've got money, they can afford plenty of options. Right now I'm taking care of people that don't have anyone but me. If I walk away, they've got no hope at all. I'll choose the people whose survival is at stake over the people whose convenience is at stake."

"You won't make friends like that," Glenn pointed out. "These are the donors that keep our operation afloat, the ones that let all of us live in lavish style."

"Maybe those aren't the sort of friends I'm looking to make," Druid replied cheekily.

Glenn's superior tone was almost eroded away now. "Don't be like that! Look, make nice and play along, I'll make it worth your while."

"Make me a really good offer," Druid said.

"The ferry."

All the rats paused in place, his surprise transmitted to all of them. "That's a good offer," he said. "You've read my file."

"I'll get a third stop put in, up near the Boat Graveyard, so that all of the Docks are in reach of the ferry, and it will go to the downtown station. Full disclosure, I'm expecting it to be a massive tourist draw, it rides past the back side of the monument and I think people will pay money to ride a ferry that takes them past the place where Leviathan died. But it will also take Brockton residents back and forth, like you've always wanted. I'll lean on the zoning boards and the tourism commission, you handle some fundraising to defray their costs. And, get to Shearsea and Pasture Green, fix them up the way you fixed the Docks."

Danny hung up the phone, and pumped his fist in victory.

* * *

The west side of the city was light on rats, being mostly manicured and maintained downtown areas and suburbs. There were still rodents present, but not enough for the scale of what was necessary. So, Druid and Assault borrowed the VTOL. It was easy enough to drive, but Assault could use his powers over kinetic energy to give the engines a boost, and he really wanted to be part of this operation when he heard that Druid was planning on loading the passenger compartment full of several tons of rats and then air-dropping them on the ritzy suburbs and McMansions of the west end, and that he had official sanction for this. Or something that could be vaguely interpreted as official sanction for this job. Assault had to see this for himself.

"How many?" he asked as they dipped in for the drop.

"I counted thirty-one thousand of them," Danny replied. "The most I've every controlled." He looked over his shoulder at the passenger space, which was filled wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with sleek-furred torpedo-shaped bodies. The creatures held themselves just far enough apart that they had room to breathe and didn't smother each other under their weight, though for the ones at the bottom it was a close thing. They flew fast for the sake of the rats, Assault charging the engines for more speed and lift. Without his help the craft would probably not have gotten off the ground. Druid handled the controls of the craft, which were so simple as to be intuitive. And when they reached the west end, he started opening the rear hatch while Assault hummed the opening theme from _The Flight of the Valkyries_. And the rats tumbled out in a stream, a seemingly-unending barrage that fell out and hit the ground running, scrambling up and down the street. They began eating all the perishable garbage that was to be found, and pulling out any garbage that could soak up water and using that to mop up puddles and wipe up mud.

Assault eased up on the engine as the load dropped, and then he took the controls from the Druid as the tall thin man walked out of the craft. The VTOL took off again, getting back to the Tower so that it would be ready for any calls that came in. These days both the Protectorate and the Wards stayed pretty busy, dealing with both the desperate and the opportunistic in the wake of Leviathan's destruction. Druid sat on a bench and let his helpers do their bit, working fast and efficiently. With so many rats, he was working at a nearly unprecedented pace, and yet he still had some attention left over to let wander. When the call had gone out to defend against the Endbringer, he and the Protectorate had been trying to figure out what to do about the Undersiders. It was a sticky situation.

Because of Tattletale, they could not expect any trick or trap to work. There was no way to set an ambush or lay out bait. The Undersiders were masters of the escape plan, there was no way to chase them or catch them when they did strike, even if the heroes got there in time to stop them from whatever crime they were committing. Because of his promise, it was basically off-limits for them to even try to attack the Undersiders in their own lair. So, he mused, it needed to be a static situation, on neutral ground, with no actual deception or gambits. It took him a minute to realize that this was just a fair fight. That was how he would beat the Undersiders.

He pulled out his phone. "Hey Glenn, it's Druid. Listen, I've got an idea. Huh? Yeah, I'm in Shearsea right now, cleaning the place up. This should go pretty fast, I brought a lot of rats and it's not nearly as big a problem as the Docks are. Anyway, it's about the Undersiders. Yeah. Yeah, I know you're not really tactical. But I feel I should run this past you: I want to call them out. A challenge, pistols at high noon if you see what I'm getting at. Public, bold. Yeah. Sure, it's time the press and the public got a chance to see what it is we do, right? So few super-battles get recorded or documented. Look, we can't find these guys to fight them. But if we fight them, we'll win. So we just need to get them to show up and stay put so we can beat them. Yeah. No, see, when I was talking to Tattletale in the command center she mentioned that they're consolidating territory, trying to wrangle all the criminal businesses for themselves. And to do that, they need the reputation. So if I post a public challenge, they can't afford to turn it down. If they don't show up they lose too much face, they won't be able to keep their business afloat. If they do show up, then we beat them. Uh huh. Uh h- wait. Me? Like by myself? That's stupid, Glenn. Yeah, it's stupid. Listen, there's four of them. And here's the secret, I'm pretty sure all four of them are more powerful than I am. Look, I'll just take three of my teammates, probably Dauntless and Triumph and Miss Militia, good blasters with area-effect capacity so they can hit things even in the dark. What? No, Glenn c'mon, I'm not going to face them all solo. Wh- dammit. I'll... I'll get back to you on this."

He hung up. Suddenly he had a lot more to think about. But, maybe there was some help a bit closer by. Shearsea was close to another residential area he'd been to a few times before on the west side. He started walking while his rats did their work. Several blocks over, about a half-hour's walk, he was at the house, and he rang the doorbell.

"Hello Mr. Alcott," the Druid said. "Is Dinah home?" He was a bit surprised when the man hugged him, but after some stilted small talk he was led inside where Dinah's mother hugged him as well, babbling about how they never got a chance to thank him for finding their girl. And only then did he find out that Dinah was laid up in bed and had been there since Leviathan attacked. He was led to her room.

The girl lay on her pillow with a cold compress on her forehead and her blankets tucked up to her chin, the room's only window blocked out with a spare blanket tacked up over it to put the room into cavelike darkness. He was asked to speak only in a soft voice and to leave when she started to get tired.

"Hey Dinah," he said. "I heard you're sick."

"Not sick," she groaned. "Just hurt."

"What happened?" he prompted.

"Broke my power when Leviathan came. Endbringers screw up my power, I can't get the numbers, all the probabilities start fuzzing together. I can't count the futures or figure what's likely. But my power isn't completely gone. So, I found one future that worked out perfectly, a future where we win. I couldn t get the odds on it, but for a few seconds I could look straight at it and see what happened, what made it different than the other futures. Then I told my mom, and then I passed out," she said. "Is there water?"

He was barely able to see a water glass on her bedside table, and he tipped it to her lips carefully, letting her sip until she was ready to stop. "So that's how you knew," he said. "And that's why you're hurting this bad."

"Was worse," she croaked.

"I am very, very sorry to hear that, and very very sorry that I didn't visit you earlier," he said. "I didn't know you were like this. I didn't know why they sent a stand-in for you to the photo shoot."

"It takes me some time to put the numbers back, to put things back where they belong," she said. "I should be fine next week, able to use my power again. Is everyone really okay?"

"Forty people were injured in the evacuation to the shelters," Danny said to her. "Eight had medical emergencies while they were in the shelters. Two people died, one old lady with a heart condition and a young diabetic man who didn't tell anyone that he hadn't brought his insulin. Several hundred buildings were destroyed, businesses and homes. A couple of heroes were injured, one very badly. And she was healed. We didn't lose any heroes or even villains. Leviathan was destroyed, and he didn't kill anyone, because of you and me. On an average day in Brockton Bay, more people die because of car accidents than died that day because of the battle. You did amazing, Dinah."

"Thanks," she said, smiling faintly. "I'm really tired now, is that okay?"

"It's fine," he said, standing up again. "By the way, they call me Druid now instead of Wharf Rat."

"That's all wrong," she said, yawning deeply. "Stupid name. I'll be glad when you change it." And then she lapsed into silence, and he stepped out, closing her door quietly behind him.

* * *

The Boardwalk was mostly destroyed, the shockwave from Leviathan's destruction had blown over the quaint shops and the trendy restaurants, and the pyroclastic wave had ignited the wreckage and even the sun-weathered boardwalk itself. Local businesses were rebuilding, but this time the monument was the centerpiece of the Boardwalk, the road bending to arc around it and frame the area. The ground was made of crushed glass, the crater was a bit oddly shaped as it was shallow at the edges and then dipped steeply down towards the middle. The giant crystal spire stood between the deepest part of the crater and the waterline, but the tourists all stood behind the railing at the edges, staring inward, talking in low voices. Nobody crossed the line, nobody came closer. It was part reverence, part fear. The ground was clearly treacherous and the price of a fall would be high. And when one looked around at the buildings that were just now being built up, empty frames as far as the eye could see, it was easy to remember the immense damage done to this area, and the continuing worries about some heretofore unknown form of radiation.

Reporters began showing up, called by the Director for a special announcement. And this time they found no stage set up, no microphones, no director, no pageantry, and no indication of what the announcement was. And at the stroke of the hour, a small blue bird landed on the top of the monument. And then the Druid appeared in the crater, standing on the broken glass effortlessly. He stood straight and tall, his face covered by a featureless oval wooden mask that matched the armor of his torso. His cloak was forest green, and he held a long walking stick of twisted mossy wood. "Good morning Brockton Bay," the hero said, facing out across the lines of people. His voice projected easily across the space. "I have an announcement for the city, and for four particular people. When I came here, villains were rampant in the city. Between thirty and forty of them. Today there are four. Months ago, I promised Tattletale that I would not track her team, or hunt them down. Since then, the Undersiders have abused my promise and exploited the good faith I extended them. They have grown bolder with daring robberies, mass murders, and chaos in the streets. They have used me to eliminate their competition. So today I am calling them out. I will be here on Saturday at noon, this spot. And next Saturday, and every Saturday after that until they show up. I am issuing them a challenge, come here and fight me in the open. Four on one. Bring your best efforts, Undersiders, bring your A game. No holding back, no mistakes. I don't want you to have any excuses when you lose. But no tricks, no hostages, just a stand-up fight, may the best cape win. I'll be here waiting, Undersiders, will you answer?"

And then the Druid turned in place and walked away from the crowd while the on-the-scene reporters chattered frantically about the meaning of this speech. He paused to lay a hand on the side of the monument, then walked past it, and kept going until he reached the water. He walked out, on top of the water, for a hundred feet before he stopped in place and sunk down under the waves.

Danny watched on the television as the local reporters inserted their commentary into this scene. "I still think that exit was way too much," he said to Glenn. "It kind of gilds the lily. It's like it's begging someone to point out how ridiculous it is."

"Showmanship," Glenn insisted, gesturing broadly. "Relax, it's such a good story that people will appreciate those touches."

But Danny had a lot else on his mind. Leviathan was stopped. The ferry was returning. But the city had taken a lot of damage. On the other hand, there was a massive fund hosted by the PRT just to repair cities after Endbringer attacks, so a lot of money was going into the reconstruction of the roads and the sewers and the utility lines. But that meant that all local industry was going into the reconstruction efforts, the factories were churning out concrete and rebar and culvert pipes as fast as they could. The Dockworkers were staying busy, unloading materials coming in off the ships and sending them on to the factories, but he was worried that when the reconstruction was over the factory owners would shut down again, and the jobs would stop. The city leaders were trying to pivot the city's economy, turning it towards finance and technology and tourism, and away from all that gritty blue-collar manufacturing. And with the rush of new visitors come to see the monuments and the city and the new Boardwalk, he felt like he himself had helped them do it. It was that storm of emotions, the boiling what-ifs, the tumbling questions of whether he had done the right thing or the wrong thing. He had not felt that in a while, he had spent weeks now gripped with utter certainty about everything, but now the frustrations were mounting again. A knot in his stomach that he had hoped was gone forever. And calling out the Undersiders was certainly adding to that indecision, that should-I-have or should-I-not-have anxiety that used to keep him from sleeping.

"There's four of them to my one," Danny pointed out, pacing in the office. "And they've got a ton of experience working together. Tattletale knows every weakness and every vulnerability, I don't even know how badly she can screw me. Grue creates a darkness that you can't see through or hear through, that even screws up your sense of touch and smell. But Bitch's dogs smell through it just fine and they can attack with impunity in that darkness, which is a terrible thing to hear about a dog the size of a Subaru with fangs the size of an actual sword. And Regent is likely the highest rated Master in the city, the son of Heartbreaker. They've got millions of dollars to purchase the best weapons and gear, and I've told them to bring their A-game. Glenn, this is stupid."

"And you're going to have plenty of power at your disposal too," Glenn reminded him. "Don't worry about that stuff. Let the rest of us get you ready. You concentrate on learning how to use the new bird-drones, and trying to keep the city sanitary while the construction crews do their thing."

Danny shook that set of worries off and changed the subject. "So, I hear that Squealer is suing us."

"Yes, and I'll be needing you to write up a-"

"I'll be testifying on her behalf," Danny interrupted.

"I beg your pardon?" the fat man blinked, taken aback. His tie today was a monochrome paisley that kept trying and failing to blend into the striped shirt he was wearing.

"Squealer's tinker talent designed those vehicles, and she deserves a fair cut of the proceeds. And when people find out about that, they'll start offering her a decent paycheck for more of her original designs. Not the stuff she messes with and distorts, but her first-draft genius. And it'll revolutionize a dozen industries to start with," Danny said, smiling with satisfaction.

Glenn scowled at him, his chins tucking down against his collar. "You know that we try to keep tinker tech out of public circulation, so they don't mess up the way that humanity's science is developing. Especially with villain tech, and we especially work to not let them get rich so they can fund even more criminal enterprises."

"Just cut Squealer a check," Danny rebutted. "Her fuel efficiency could help the world environment, and reduce the oil profits that are funding a dozen wars in the Middle East. And if she gets rich, she's going to buy herself a gold-plated mansion filled with gold-plated statues of herself and oiled-up male models to massage her feet. She's not going to start an empire of crime, she's going to pamper herself. We'll have to be careful to not let her buy a lethal amount of drugs or she'll die within a week. What she does is objectively good for the world. C'mon man, don't be Piggot about this."

Glenn tried not to laugh at that. "You're turning her into a word?"

"Absolutely. It could catch on."

The new director shook his head. "Did you hear that they are not actually pressing charges against her? Guess you're not going to get your Christmas list this year."

Danny sighed. "Let me guess, not enough evidence that she knew Calvert was a villain?"

"Well, no evidence, but yeah basically."

Danny nodded. "Okay. Que sera sera, and all that. Just get me ready for the Undersiders, and cut Squealer a check. I'm going to go visit Oni Lee."

"How's he doing?"

"Better. He's speaking. He told me that he feels funny. I told him that it's been a long time since he felt anything, so it's okay to feel weird at first. Why do you ask?"

"Human interest," Glenn said. "The evening news loves a redemption story for their human interest segment, and a villain assassin who's rehabilitated and reformed would go great with some of the other narratives I'm advancing."

"Goodbye Glenn."

* * *

"God, this is going to take months," Danny said, watching the construction workers repairing the street.

"Don't you dare," Battery said, jabbing a finger in his direction. "I don't care if you figure out how to fix the streets with your rats, you stay away from it and let someone else in this city do a job."

"That's not what I meant, honest," Danny said, struggling to pick up the shorter mugger and carry him towards the VTOL. "I just want the city to be back to normal, that's all."

Battery picked up the other two and hauled them into the passenger compartment in a fraction the time, then stood back and let Danny struggle with his captive. "Just keep doing what you're doing, Druid. Deal with the garbage, keep things safe. It's going to be a while before trucks can travel around here more than a few blocks in any direction, but even if things aren't normal they're at least getting better. I mean, you've heard that grocery stores are starting to get restocked again, right? Not just airdrops of supplies, but local grocery stores are getting their shipments in. It takes a lot of cargo bikes to carry as much as an eighteen-wheeler, but it gets done."

"Does wonders for unemployment too," Druid said, dropping the third mugger next to the other two. All three of them were bound hand and foot with zip ties and were unconscious from a combination of tasers and sedatives. Danny's new birds were versatile.

Battery nodded. "Four new bike courier companies in the city, three of them specializing in cargo hauling. It's actually kind of neat. There's a lot of talk about making the city more bike-friendly while they rebuild, trying to encourage foot traffic. It would basically let them extend the Boardwalk several blocks in from the water, expand the city's tourism district."

"I don't like the idea of basing a city's economy on tourism," he said. "Too fickle. If interest dies down, we're sunk. And I don't trust these people not to try to launch Leviathanland as an amusement park to try to turn this into a vacation destination."

She laughed aloud at that. "They might actually try it. But come on, we do have a good climate here, which is why you can actually wear armor and a cloak in high summer and I can wear skintight unitards in winter. And a good climate is almost all you need for a tourism economy."

Druid stepped back out of the craft and dusted his hands off. "Maybe, but I'd like to see us as a manufacturing economy. Maybe a white-collar manufacturing economy. The city's got a pretty good tech sector and engineering firms, and a lot of existing factory buildings with all the infrastructure. It should be pretty easy for us to become a world leader in automation and high-tech industry."

Battery shrugged. "They don't listen to my opinions on this stuff, or even yours. Let the mayor and his cronies do what they do, and we'll just lock up the muggers and call it a day," she said. She thumped the button and the back of the plane closed up, the ramp lifting to seal shut. Druid waved as he watched her climb in and lift off, then he went back to work scouring threats from the city. Some two-legged that carried guns, others with many more legs that could spread deadly disease. He kept a retinue of birds around him to keep up the illusion. The inside of his cloak was lined with dozens of small pockets, and in each small pocket was a small mouse and a tiny control rig with a joystick and a handful of buttons. Those mice controlled the drone birds that he kept around him, so that he appeared to control the birds with the same ease and facility as his rodents.

And one of those birds was equipped with a couple new gadgets from the workshop of Armsmaster. That tinker was producing more and more work these days, his workshop evolving as he condensed the parts and made every process more efficient. It seemed like every day one member of the team or another got a new weapon or a new piece of equipment to test out, or more refinements to the armor they all wore. Druid bent down and picked up his walking stick, and was very careful not to touch four particular knots in the wood at the same time. The nano-disassemblers Armsmaster had devised could disintegrate pretty much anything. It was meant to be a major equalizer in his battle against the Undersiders, tomorrow.

So were the birds. He picked out the ordinary-looking pigeon that he was testing out today. It swooped and dove, flying out several blocks away, so that he could only sense or see it through the screen projected to the mouse inside his cloak and the coordinates alongside them. He swooped around, perched, pecked, and scanned the area to make sure it was suitable. Then it took off, and left behind a small spurt of pheromones. It flew back towards him, leaving a thin trail of the chemicals, and then headed to an area a block west of him. The rats there had a pack of stray dogs corralled, hungry creatures that were getting desperate. Odds were most of them had families that lost them in the chaos of Leviathan's attack. It was nearly impossible for the animals shelters to take in all the animals, and almost impossible for families of missing pets to travel to nearby shelters to look for their missing friends. The rats rounded the dogs up with hissing and coordinated tactics, the same sort of bear-baiting he had used against Lung. And then they opened up a gap in the corral while the pigeon flew low. Its supersonics kicked in, and the dogs turned and fled the unbearable noise, running off. Their path turned and led in a specific path as they blindly followed a trail that was laid out for them. The pigeon circled around ahead of them and started hailing them with another whistle, this one much gentler, a dog-whistle to lure them in. _One mouse to control one pigeon, one pigeon to control a pack of feral dogs. Not bad_ , Danny thought.

Unfortunately there was not much he could do with cats. They didn't respond as reliably to the signals, and they had a tendency to just try to kill his rats and pigeons regardless of pheromones or high-pitched whistles. But Danny had read somewhere that urban outdoor cats were some of the most prolific murderers ever found in the animal kingdom.

He activated the comm circuit in his helmet with pressure from his jaw. "Armsmaster, this is Druid," he said.

"Armsmaster here."

"Successful field test of the new dog-whistle drone. I'll be testing it more through the day, but I wanted to keep you appraised."

"I appreciate it. By the way, I've got a memo in my box with your name attached to it, recommending that I stop working on new weapons tech for Velocity."

Danny directed his rats and started corralling cats the way he had the dogs. "Yeah, just another one of my tell-you-how-to-do-your-job things. Velocity's powers aren't really cut out for combat. I mean, dividing his strength and durability in proportion to increases in his speed? There's no net gain, it's ten punches at one-tenth force. But if you stop thinking of him as a speedster, he gets a lot more interesting. Armsmaster, what do you call someone that can think at ten times normal speed, type and read and process at ten time normal speed?"

"A thinker, and a damn strong one," Armsmaster said. "Someone we'd keep on the console all the time, honestly. But how do you tell a man that you're going to bench him? That he's not super enough to be in the field, but is super enough to hang out in the barracks and order the pizza?"

"People have had to be retired to desk duty for centuries," Druid replied. "You guys go way back, but if you'd like I can talk to him."

Armsmaster sighed. "No, dammit, I'll do it. He should hear it from me."

"If nothing else, you know what it feels like," Danny said.

"Hah! What are you talking about? I'm at the top of my game these days. Did you know when I stepped down from leadership I was worried all the time that Dauntless would become more powerful than me? He gets stronger every day. But with all the work I've been able to do, I'm twice as powerful as I was then. I'm not riding a desk, I'm pulling further ahead of you all every day."

Danny chuckled along with the other man, sharing a laugh with his friend. "And I'm very glad that this move has been so good for you. You kind of resented it at first."

"Resented the hell out of it," Armsmaster confirmed. "Now then, I gotta go, I'm working on a test to interlock these nano-saws, and if I screw this up all life on earth is over. So, you know, I should concentrate."

"Concentrate hard," Druid said. "Later."

He hung up and called animal control to pick up the cats. He didn't need any threats to his minions. Cats were just not part of the Druid's arsenal.

* * *

Saturday dawned clear and sweet, a light breeze catching the branches of the trees and wicking sweat from skin, the sun just warm enough to leave the body feeling invigorated and not sapped. And through Saturday morning, PRT technicians and Kid Win were installing force field projectors near the railing of the monument park, creating a safe zone for bystanders to observe from. The area was too big to wall off entirely, so innocent passerby were urged away from unprotected areas and warning signs were posted, cautioning citizens of the likelihood of a parahuman battle in the area.

At eleven-thirty, the Druid walked out of the front doors of the Protectorate Tower, and started walking towards the center of the Boardwalk. Birds fluttered along with him, landing on powerlines and tree branches, dipping down to cruise just inches above his head. Dogs trotted in from side streets and alleyways, joining in the procession. And rats mixed into the procession, not as a unified force but just slipping up out of hiding long enough to be seen, then disappearing again, hinting at the huge well of hidden power he could call on. He walked with his staff, tapping gently against the sidewalk as he strolled. People stopped to take pictures, gaping at the hero making his first big show of power. Other people walked with him, joining the procession. Traffic slowed as people and dogs spilled off the sidewalk, cars pausing to switch into the clear middle lanes. Passersby and tourists alike walked after him, following towards the Boardwalk monument.

At noon he strode past the railings, and walked across the broken glass to where he stood a week before. Birds swooped all around him, landing and lifting off again, and finally settling on the ground all around him in a spray of colorful songbird splashes and drab pigeon grays. Dogs followed along with him, looking more restless and feral as they milled about. By contrast the rats looked almost regimented and disciplined as they took places all around. He cradled the staff in the crook of his elbow, and stood waiting. Television cameras broadcast live to local stations, showing him waiting. After a minute, he conspicuously pushed back his glove and checked his watch, then went back to his silent standing vigil.

He locked his knees and cued the armor to brace itself, so that it held him upright rather than the other way around. This let him relax inside his armor while appearing eerily still from outside, like a statue disturbed only by the gentle wind on his cloak and the motion of the dogs as they settled in around his feet. He flexed his jaw to open the comms. "Druid to Benthic," he said.

"Benthic here," she replied a second later.

"Hey baby. I'm out here doing the stupidest thing of my life because I let Glenn talk me into it. Where are you?"

"I'm about a hundred yards behind you," she said. "Underwater, just out of sight. My visor can compensate for the distortion of refraction, so I've got the best view of anyone except maybe you. So, I have to say, this is really unlike you. Not just the Druid thing, I honestly like it. I basically designed the costume, so of course I like it. But I mean the stand-up face-to-face battle. Against the ABB you just sent the rats to ambush them and didn't even show up until after everything was clear. You were so adamant about not being near danger. And then against the Merchants you hit them with a landmine and then sent your rats to jump them, only showed up when it was mostly resolved. You beat Crusader with mind games and a phone call. You attacked Othala and Rune with sneak attacks, ambushed Night with pickup trucks, captured Fog by holding her hostage, and then tricked Purity into wearing herself out so you could catch her. Coil was beaten after a long campaign of investigation and maneuvering, then a massive overwhelming ambush. You talked Uber and Leet and Circus and Trainwreck into leaving villainy. You exposed Shadow Stalker and had her own teammates arrest her. You intimidated Faultline's crew out of the city. I don't even know what happened with the Travelers, but it was definitely something weird. You've done almost everything except an actual stand-up fight, you've done everything possible to avoid a stand-up fight. And yet here you are, declaring a challenge."

He tried to shrug but his armor wouldn't let him. "You're not wrong."

"And yet somehow I'm still so certain that this is still a gambit," she said.

"You're really very sure of that?" he teased.

"Yup," she said, confidently. "I'm not sure how, but this is still a gambit."

"But Glenn would not like me using tricks," he pointed out.

"So obviously Glenn is one of the people you're messing with," she replied.

Danny cued his visor's extruded view, and it zoomed like a telescope where he was watching. The internal surface monitored his eye movements and tracked them to manipulate the view. "Hang on baby," he said, "Looks like they're gonna show." Across the rooftops, a mile away, he could see two massive beasts leaping from rooftop to rooftop, banking off of walls. Sometimes they dipped out of sight only to reappear a minute later. And as they approached he could see four figures sitting astride them. One in black, one in white and silver, one in purple, one in brown. The monsters they rode were bedecked with straps and apparati, apparently they had taken him at his word to bring their full armament. He had no idea what that stuff was, but he did trust that Tattletale would bring good gear. "I love you Taylor," he said. "Gotta go now."

"Love you too Dad," she said, and then he bumped his jaw to shut off the comms, and unlocked the armor so he could stand on his own.

The crowd parted to make way for the massive animals, weird mutated beasts with gnarled muscle instead of skin and hooks of bone prodding out through that. The crowd surged towards the force field projectors, moving to get a safe view of the proceedings. The mutants hopped the railing, their wide-clawed paws leaving deep imprints as they cracked through the crust of glass. The Undersiders did not dismount, they just stared down at him with the psychological advantage of height. Danny reflected that doing that probably indicated a sense of insecurity on their parts.

Tattletale leaned forward. "Really? A challenge at high noon? Who does that?"

"Someone who knows that the criminals you're intimidating to take control would never let you live it down if you didn't answer me," he said.

Grue sighed. "Let's just get this over with."

Druid nodded. "Do your darkness, we'll take it from there." A cloud of black billowed out, swallowing the entire park, extending out past the railings. And there was silence, and stillness, except for the eerie roiling of the black cloud. The onlookers stared with bated breath.

And inside, Druid held up both hands crossed as a "T for timeout". The Undersiders were already lunging forward, and checked their movements. He reached under his cloak, and pulled out a small white flag on a stick, and waved it three times. A minute later, the darkness around him pulled back, leaving him in a clearing inside the swirling walls of midnight. And then Grue, Tattletale, Regent and Bitch walked out of the darkness and stood across from him. Bitch crossed her arms, Regent put his hands on his hips. Grue looked like he was in a ready position, prepared to attack or defend, Tattletale managed to slouch while standing. "Okay," she said. "So, this is obviously the only way you could get a meeting on neutral ground, right?"

"Yeah," he said. "Would you rather fight?"

"Yeah," Bitch snarled. "We should fuck you up."

Druid stood in place, surrounded by dogs that lay at his feet. There was no way to attack him without killing at least a few of the feral dogs. He stared straight at her, to see if she was going to murder him or if his hunch about her weak spot for canines was on target. She glared, but did not whistle her mutants to kill him. He held her eyes. "You guys aren't working for Coil anymore. So I'm going to ask the same question that I asked before: are you getting what you want?"

"I just want to be left alone," Bitch shot back. There was real venom in her voice.

"And are you being left alone?" he asked.

"Hell no," she said.

"If I could make arrangements to have you left alone, would you stop stealing and killing?" Danny asked her.

"If they fuck with me, I'm gonna fuck them up," Bitch shot back.

"Understood," Danny said. He was quickly losing the impression that Bitch could be reached at all. She was too defensive, too hair-trigger. It may well be that whatever the best intentions were, she was going to be a danger to everyone around her for her entire life. "So, Grue, I know the least of all about you. There has to be a reason that you need all this money."

"There is."

"And do you need more? Or do you need something that can be bought with money."

He hesitated, looked at Tattletale. "I need a respectable job that looks good on paper."

Danny nodded. "That may be pretty easy."

"Not Wards or Protectorate," the black-garbed young man said. "It needs to be reliable, safe, trustworthy."

"That may be less easy, but still doable," Druid said.

"Seriously guys?" Regent blurted out. "You're negotiating like this? With him? With the Protectorate? You gotta be shitting me. Why would you quit this?"

"You're just doing this for fun and money?" Danny asked.

The young man in white and silver shrugged. "Yeah, basically. Why would anyone do anything else if they could do this?"

"What about you, Tattletale?" he asked.

She snorted. "What, join you?"

"There'd be a place for you."

"I've already said no to you before. Schedules, restrictions, clutter, bullshit. It's not my speed. Besides, what would we do, drive around in a van and solve mysteries?"

"Like the mystery of the disfigured parahumans with amnesia?"

"Yeah, like that," she countered. "Jinkies, Rat Man, is there a clue?"

"Actually, there is a clue, they all have the same tattoo," he replied.

Tattletale blinked, her mouth opening to speak, then closing. Then she slowly answered, "Are you serious?"

"I really am. Now you guys have a chat, I've got to call someone about Grue's issue." He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory while the Undersiders stepped ten feet away, whispering amongst themselves. Regent seemed pretty pissed.

"Hey, Barry. It's Danny. I've got a favor to ask, and it's a big one. I've got a young man here with management experience that he can't put on a resume."

"Hey, Danny! Can I assume this is official business?"

"It's off-the-books official business."

"Thought so. Hmm, I've got a couple things that could work, but if it goes sour it will really suck for everyone. And it might get connected back to you. Tell you what, I've got a brother-in-law who's doing a lot of the city work for street repairs right now, would he be okay as a foreman on a road crew?"

"Let me check," Danny said. He covered the mouthpiece with his palm. "Hey, Grue! Would you be okay as a foreman for a repair contractor?"

"I..." Grue looked around at the others. "I'd like that. Will I have to go to jail?"

"I'm gonna need a visible win here," Danny said. He pulled some zip ties out of his pockets. "Anyone got a knife?"

Bitch handed him a knife without a word, and he started shaving the teeth off the zip ties. "There. This should hold just enough to look good, but won't restrain anyone. I get a win, and you break out later and make a getaway. And then you call me and I tell you where to go sign the papers and get your job."

Regent shook his head, the mask hiding his expression but his body language portraying almost pained disbelief. "Bro, no, there's a better way."

"I can get Aisha next week if I do this," he said. "And she never needs to go back. This is what I've been working for, A- Regent." He stepped forward, tested the zip ties that Druid handed him, and then put them over his wrists, standing behind the hero.

Bitch crossed her arms again. "I'm gonna need lots of space, to run and ride and stuff. And food for the dogs. And medicine too."

"I can't promise that people won't walk into your land if we set you up," Danny said. "Can you promise me that if they do, you won't kill them?"

"I can't promise that," she said, glaring.

He shrugged. "Okay then. Tattletale, how about a consultant instead of a member?"

She paused, looking at him. "I could do some consulting."

"It wouldn't pay much. But you'd get to see all the most interesting mysteries going on."

She shrugged. "I can basically retire now. If I can keep my hand in and not deal with anyone telling me how to live my life, I'm cool with that."

Danny handed her a filed-down set of zip ties, and then handed Bitch back her knife.

"What the hell?" Regent whined, flinging his hands out to the sides as he stared at Tattletale.

"Beats the Birdcage," she said back.

"What?" Regent blurted. "Oh, c'mon, you're not going to the Birdcage! We can take this guy, he's just one old man with rats, and we've kicked the shit out of bigger enemies than him for our entire career!"

Tattletale shook her head. "It's been a lot of fun, but we never really had a chance here," she said. She glanced over at Druid, and nodded. "Do it."

A bolt of electricity shot down from above, shocking Regent and dropping him where he stood to twitch on the ground. And then massive vines burst from the earth, twining around him in a massive bundle of coils and roots, small leaves springing into the open and dripping sticky sap across the young man. Bitch leaped back, still gripping her knife, the dogs lunging up to flank her.

"It's containment foam in a plastic tube, isn't it?" Tattletale said.

"It is, but it'll fool anyone that expects me to have powers over nature," Druid said.

Bitch looked up, at her teammates in zipties behind him, and the electrocuted teammate on the ground. And she started to work out which direction she was going next. "Wait!" Bitch said. "I told you what I want! You have to give me what I want like you did for them!"

"They both agreed to stop stealing and killing," Danny said. "You couldn't promise me that. And you want me to annex a huge area for you, and ship you supplies on a regular basis for years to come. Your offer is for me to give you stuff, they're both offering to make a trade."

She shook that off like it was water on one of her dogs. "Whatever, I knew I couldn't trust you," she blurted, and started to turn around and march towards her dog. The ground erupted in gouts of flame, cutting her off from the mutants, and then a tide of rats swept her feet out from under her. She landed hard on her back, and a cardinal dive bombed her, releasing a cloud of powder just under her nose while she was gasping for breath.

"Keep her between you and the dogs or they'll murder you," Tattletale advised him. The darkness dissipated, and the world came into light again, he could see all the way to the force-field observation area. The crowd cheered when they saw him still standing. The dogs stuck close to defend their mistress, but with Tattletale's insight he was able to disable them without hurting the dogs trapped inside, and he sent his rats to free the animals from the caul of amniotic fluid they were trapped in.

An hour later Tattletale and Grue escaped custody and disappeared, Regent and Bitch were both sent to trial.


	14. Chapter 14

Glenn looked frustrated enough to punch his desk, but he was just not that kind of man. "You really put me in a bind here," he said. "You compromise with villains, but you won't compromise with the PRT. You subvert the law to get villains to surrender, and I know that you're refusing to report hundreds of drug offenses every time you go out patrolling. But you handed me a fiasco because you refused to let Shadow Stalker's violation of probation slide, and I live in fear that you're going to catch me in some procedural error and get me arrested like Piggot. What am I supposed to do, Druid? Really, tell me, what am I supposed to do?"

"Your best," Danny said calmly. "Do your best, and we'll be fine. Shadow Stalker was not doing her best, and Piggot was certainly not. They were both choosing to hurt other people for personal reasons. Don't do that. These villains I'm working with, they're fine as long as they do their best. I check up on Circus and Trainwreck to make sure they're still doing the right thing. I'll be keeping an eye on Grue and Tattletale too. If they screw up, I'll bring them in. And as for that drug thing, I actually did report all of those during the Brockton Bay Bust, and it took me weeks to get the trust of the people back. People can tell the difference when you're protecting them, or when you're cracking down on victimless crimes just because you think the law is more important than people."

Glenn settled back, sighing deeply. He seemed to deflate as he settled against the chair. "You want to know something? If you'd cut me in, things would have gone even better. The PRT owns a few thousand acres north of the city we used to use as a proving ground before the safety standards got so good that we can do weapons tests inside the city. We could have taken all the stray dogs in the city and sent them up north with her. All she wants to do is take care of dogs, and the dogs need taking care of. The cost to feed them would be the same if they're in shelters or in her care, so nothing is lost."

Danny nodded. "So, go to her prosecutor. Arrange an insanity defense and an alternative sentence, a few decades of community service taking care of the dogs. It should be even easier for you to cut that deal than it was for me to arrange Grue and Tattle to break out."

"I guess," Glenn said. "But Regent is going to go to the Birdcage. He's killed a lot of people, and slavery is one of those crimes that just doesn't get any forgiveness."

Danny sat on the corner of the desk. "I figured that would be the case. Listen, that thing today was rough, and it could honestly have gone a different way. If they hadn't liked my flag of truce, it would have gotten ugly. I was surrounded by dogs with the hope that Bitch wouldn't want to hurt them, but if she'd been inclined she could have turned them all into giant monster murder-machines. Regent never lifted a finger against me, but he could have really messed me up if he had good timing. I handed those weapons they were carrying over to Armsmaster, and he's still working on them but the answer so far is 'lethal'. If they'd gone at me instead of listening, I would probably be paste. Okay? Now, the reason I'm telling you this, Glenn, is that I want you to hold off on any big gloating celebrations. I don't want you to make this a big thing, because if you challenge the supervillains of the world, I'm gonna have to clean it up. And I don't want to count on being lucky, Glenn. Just give me a few weeks, at least until the roads are all fixed and things are back to normal."

"Sorry," Director Chambers said. "It's done."

"What's done?"

"Brockton Bay, the Villain-Free City," the fat man said. "Brockton Bay, Victory City. The Jewel of the Protectorate."

"Oh god tell me you're kidding."

"I'm not kidding. These are going out to travel agencies around the nation," Glenn said, dropping some samples on the desk. "The idea is to give the tourism a boost. We advertise that we've got the Leviathan memorial, we advertise that we've gotten rid of the last villains in the city, super-crime is a thing of the past. People feel safe here, we've got great weather, great attractions, the new Boardwalk, we bring in a ton of money from around the nation or even the world."

Danny put his face in his hands. The mask was smooth in his palms. "You're putting a bull's-eye on my back, man. A giant bull's-eye for the whole world. Jesus, I'll be lucky if the Ash Beast doesn't come here to see if I've earned the hype. You're going to make my daughter an orphan."

"It's not that bad, it's-"

"It's that bad," Danny said, looking up. "You've told every villain that if they come here, there's no competition and only one guy to beat to earn it all. They'll be tripping over themselves to claim it all for themselves, Glenn. I don't want to have to beat every villain in the entire world just to keep my home safe, and that is exactly what you've just done to me."

"Now that's not-"

"Asshole," Danny said. His voice was tired when he said it. "Why did you do this?"

"Because I had to," Glenn said. "Where do you think those favors come from, Druid? Where do you think I get all the influence with the city council and the bureaucrats? How do you think it is that I have that kind of pull owed to me? It's because I do things like this. It's because I can convince them that I can shoot millions of dollars into the local tourism board. It's because I can tell the voting constituents that they're safe and that their leaders did a great job. That's how I can make arrangements with the DA. That's how I can get the ferry restarted. That's how I can keep us all in a job. That's why the city is paying for our tower, and our materials, and our staff, even though we've now made sure that there's not a job to do. I had to publicize this, I had to make sure that the people who believed in us get their own payout. That's my job, Druid, and if that's an asshole's job then so be it. Now get out of my office, go clean the streets and bust the crooks, I need to do a speech from the courthouse steps with the mayor tomorrow and I've got a hundred things to do."

Danny stormed out, the cloak swirling. He felt ridiculous wearing a cape. More and more, he felt ridiculous wearing a mask. He had dropped by the Dalton house a few times to visit Panacea socially, and he thought maybe that New Wave had the right idea. No masks, nothing to hide. No costumes, no spandex, they could all just dress in normal clothes like sane adults while they threw fireballs and controlled armies of rats.

"Druid to console," he said.

"Console here, Velocity speaking."

"Hey Velocity. I'm going out on my route, keep me appraised if anything comes up in my vicinity, would you?"

"Will do. By the way, they've got Tattletale tied into our comms now, I understand that's your doing."

"In a way. I thought she could help."

"We'll see. Even if she's not a villain, she's still very hard to trust. It'll take her a while to earn our trust like you did."

"Are you saying that you didn't trust me when I signed up, the way you don't trust her?"

"I've got another call coming in," Velocity said. "I'll ring you if I've got anything."

Druid laughed a little as he signaled ahead to the motor pool that he needed a ride out. Assault was there, warming up the VTOL when Druid stepped aboard. "Afternoon, Dru," the superstrong speedster said. "Destination?"

"Downtown central," Danny said. "They got hit hard, but all the road crews are working on suburbs and the Boardwalk for now, so the downtown proper has been kinda neglected."

The man nodded. "No problem. This cleanup has been a pain in the ass. The first week was pretty cool, there were damaged buildings that needed to be demolished safely before they could be rebuilt. And that is just cool as hell, you understand. With powers like mine, how can I not dream about opportunities to trash a building completely and be okay for it." The craft lifted off, the rotors angled, and they took off towards the skyline district. "But after that, there's just not a lot for me to do. My ability to magnify or redirect kinetic energy doesn't let me lift and carry a load of rubble, or truck away garbage. It's just completely useless. So I just hang around the tower and wait for a call, but lately that just means showing up to pick up a mugger or carjacker who's already pinned or knocked out, and carrying them away to jail."

Druid nodded. "I hear you. If I think of anything you can do to help, I'll be sure to let you know, but I don't have anything right now."

"Even my wife is helping," Assault groused. "Short bursts of super-strength and super-speed are good enough for her to clear debris and set up materials. Triumph is down by the waterfront hauling sandbags. But Dauntless and Miss Militia and I? We just take turns driving the plane, grabbing bad guys, and filling out inprocessing paperwork."

"And reminding people that the Protectorate didn't stop watching over them when Leviathan died," Druid reminded him. "Times like this, I could believe in patrols, just to maintain a presence, just to remind everyone that we're still here and we're still helping. Trust me, that's going to be important."

"Why, what's up?" Assault said, banking the VTOL around on a ruined street with no traffic on it.

"Glenn is working on a publicity campaign naming this as the Villain-Free City, the Jewel of the Protectorate. The City Where Heroes Won."

The landing gear touched down, and Assault craned around to see the other man, his face incredulous. "He didn't."

"He did."

"We're fucked."

"Yep," Druid said, standing. "Thanks for the ride."

"Thanks for the head's-up," Assault said, shaking his head as he looked back at his dashboard. The ramp descended, and Danny walked away. His feet hit the street and Assault lifted off before he even closed the back ramp. He began organizing the rats, moving them out of their hidey-holes and collecting them to do the work. By now, at least, word had gotten around, and people were separating their trash. Anything perishable was set in different piles than the rest of the trash, in most of the yards and driveways up and down these streets. But he was noticing something different in his rats, more and more of them were smarter, sharing their memories with him. Originally that had only been present near his home, where he spent most of his time. But as he thought about it, the proportions had been shifting that direction for a while, and it was really peaking ever since the Leviathan attack. All the trash to eat and work to do had kept him setting adult females on overdrive, cranking out new litters to multiply his workforce. Most of the new batch was still juvenile, but there were plenty of intelligent adults for him to work with.

He set them to work, eating anything that could be hazardous if the next trash pickup didn't come for a few weeks, and clearing as much of the puddles and debris as they could. Rats didn't have a lot of lifting strength, but their tooth enamel was significantly harder than iron, and they could chew large objects into smaller parts for easier transport. They weren't good for construction per se, they couldn't pour concrete or lay rebar, but they could do the time-consuming setup so that trained humans could get straight to work instead of wasting their time.

"Druid to Tattletale," he said. No response. "Druid to Tattletale," he repeated.

"Console here Druid. Forgot to mention earlier, she's not using that handle. That name is registered to a known villain that the Protectorate would never cooperate with. But there is an entry for Lisa on the comm channel."

"Oh, is Lisa her real name?"

"No," Velocity said, and hung up.

"Weird," Danny Hebert commented. "Okay then. Druid to Lisa."

"Lisa here, what's going on Rat Man?"

"Did you get through to Faultline?"

"Yeah I did, and they told me just what you told me to expect. And it turns out the problem is a lot bigger than that. This symbol, it comes up a lot of places. There are dozens of heroes in the Protectorate that have this symbol and mysterious origins. I'm making some phone calls, it's kind of fun to ring someone up and say 'Hi there, do you have amnesia?', it just really gets you the greatest reactions."

"Glad you're enjoying yourself. Conclusions?"

"This thing is huge. It's international at least, and it keeps tapping into other unexplored mysteries. Sometimes people show up speaking languages that are not spoken by any other person on Earth. Or they retain vague impressions of their former life that are completely impossible. One dude was apparently a native speaker of Ancient Egyptian, and that's impossible because that's been a dead language for millennia. And lots of these people, including a few in Faultline, are pretty sure they remember being tortured or studied. This is sounding a lot like an alien abduction theory, but actually even more mysterious. And the chatter on the conspiracy theorist networks gives this thing a name: Cauldron."

"Cauldron," the Druid of Brockton Bay mused. "That's not really a positive-sounding name, is it?"

* * *

Flechette raced away, running up the chain to take the rooftops, waving over her shoulder with a cheery grin. Parian smiled back and waved, less enthusiastically but just as heartfelt.

"I didn't mean to snoop," the Druid said, stepping out of the shadows. Parian jumped back, stifling a squeal of surprise, and loops of thread tipped with sharpened metal needles flung up from her hands as she moved to defend herself. She recognized the man, and lowered her hands, the needles sliding back into concealment. "I just got here," he said. "Came to congratulate you on your degree."

"Thanks, I guess," she said. She looked down and away as she sat on a bench. "Not sure what to do with it though."

"It's a degree in fashion design," he said. "You become a fashion designer with it."

She shrugged. "I know, but now I'm one of the four people that killed Leviathan. I'm being offered a book deal. And besides, getting to be a top-shelf fashion designer is as much about luck as talent, you have to know the right people and make the right connections, trust the right people. It's hard to feel comfortable in an industry that fickle. And what would I design? It's not like there's only one kind of fashion design. I always pictured myself doing haute couture, but it's a glutted market with more pretenders than opportunities. I just.. I thought there would be some sort of sign that I was doing the right thing."

"Do you feel like it's the right thing?" Druid asked.

"Not really."

"Then that's the sign. That's the only sign you get," he said. "You're hardly the first college graduate to have trouble picking a path when you graduate."

The girl sighed, resting the chin of her porcelain mask on the backs of her wrists crossed over her knees. "I guess. There just aren't many things I'm really certain about, and it would be so easy to make a mistake."

"Man, I know that feeling," he said, remembering the boil of frustration, the what-if's and should-I's. "But I don't think many people in your field feel that way. I would think that anyone that decides on fashion design would be pretty confident about her choices."

"I had been in computer technologies," she said. "And I decided to do something different. As different as I could. And it works with my powers, I can sew and weave faster than anyone, more accurately, hold the fabric taut for a cut, everything."

"Why did you decide to do something different?" Danny asked.

She shrugged, still not looking at him. "My parents were pushing so hard, and I'd never felt strongly about computer science. I went through a ... hard time, and when I was back to myself I knew I didn't want to be where I was."

"So you never felt strongly about fashion design, you just felt strongly about 'not computer sciences'."

"Maybe."

"And now that you're here, you're not feeling strongly about any of the paths in front of you."

"I guess," she said.

He sighed, and sat beside her. "Parian, it sounds like this isn't a problem with fashion design or computer sciences, or your degree or your book deal. It's a problem with you. You're very indecisive. Now normally I'd tell you to beat that on your own, or resign yourself to always being handicapped by your inability to commit to anything. But honestly, the indecisiveness is not your biggest problem."

"Oh, and what is?" Parian asked.

"It's tough," Danny said, "because I cannot think of any good way to put this. There's no diplomatic phrase or euphemism that softens the blow."

"Whatever," Parian said, lowering her head again.

"You're immature," he said, his voice sad. "Clearly intelligent, but socially undeveloped and emotionally stunted. Probably sheltered, isolated, held to high standards in some ways with goals that insulated you from outside experiences. So now you are using your powers to create stuffed animals, dressing like a children's doll, and flirting with someone six years too young for you. Parian, you're twenty-two and she's sixteen, and that is _criminal_."

The woman leaped up, her shoulders tense. "Stop it!" she yelled. "Dammit, it's not like that!"

"There's something you feel strongly about," he said, his voice still sad. "And I'm sorry. But if I turned a blind eye, I'd be an accessory to this. And they call this sort of thing 'grooming', when an adult like you takes an interest in a child like her. It's not good for either of you. But it looks like to some degree you're trying to reclaim your own childhood or adolescence, almost a regression."

"I said stop," she said, and a wreath of threads spread from her sleeves and shoulders, arcing like cobras ready to strike, dozens of needles aimed straight at him. "Leave me alone, and don't talk to me anymore."

"No," he said, standing. He loomed over her, and her needle-tipped threads dipped, wilted. "The Protectorate has an on-call psychiatrist. You need to see someone, get some counseling. You're unable to commit to anything except rebelling against your parents and flirting with someone two-thirds your age. Actually, let me take that back: I think the Protectorate would be bad for you. It's a very structured environment, which could give you purpose and guidance for a while, but some day you'd retire and you'll be right back where you are now."

"So what do you think I should do?" she asked, sounding defeated.

"Make a mistake," he said. "A major one. Deliberately, consciously. To see how bad it is. To see how you recover from it. Pick a job that you know you'll hate, or that you know you can't do. Try it, suck at it. Leave it, do something different. Find a hobby, something of your own, something that nobody can tell you whether you're doing it right or wrong. Keep a journal and record your thoughts, and only your thoughts, nothing that anyone else says to you."

"And Flechette?"

"Wait. She'll be eighteen in a couple of years. Wait until she's nineteen, so she's closer to where you are, and so that you don't feel like you're pouncing on her the second she's legal," the Druid said. "I've got to go now, but... I'll be around if you want to talk. You're going to have to do some hard things, and there's nothing that can make them easy. But we can talk." He turned and he walked away, feeling terrible about what he had said. He slipped into the shadows, following the rats that navigated for him.

"Damn," Lisa said into his ear. "Is that what it looks like from the outside? Because that looked cruel."

"I wasn't trying to be cruel," he said. "And I didn't think I'd left my comms open."

"Oh, you didn't. I hacked you," she said easily. "So, I've got a power that lets me know things about people, but I thought your power was all rats."

He shrugged. "You don't need a power to understand people. You just need to know some people. And also rats can smell people's emotions and things like that. It's pretty easy to see where someone is at with that. Her emotional responses reminded me of an adolescent or a child, not a young woman of twenty-two. It's an observable difference."

"Well, I guess that makes sense. Man, if you did have my power I wonder what kind of stuff you'd be able to tell about people."

"If you had my senses, or if I had your power, we'd neither of us ever be happy with what we knew," he pointed out.

"Spoilsport."

* * *

"So, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Taylor asked, as they walked to Fugly Bob's.

"Well, for one thing I haven't been out with you for a while," he said. "We work in the same building and we never see each other anymore."

"I've been busy. You've been busy. And we chat on the comms for like two hours a day."

"Still, nothing quite like seeing each other in person," he said. "And, yes, before you ask, I need to do cleanup for this area, my way."

"I thought that was a given," she said, smiling. She was wearing a crop-top and loose-fitting shorts, it was a hot day today. Too hot for the cloak and armor, so he was more than eager to do his work in street clothes. "So, did you hear about Chris?"

"What about him?" Danny asked.

"He figured out what his specialty was. Apparently he's got a special knack for modular creations, multi-purpose parts, things like that. That's why the Alternator Cannon came together the way it did, not because it's a cannon but because of the alternation. I'm not sure I fully get that, but now he's working on a whole new suite of inventions that interact and interplay with each other for increased effects, or one thing that does a half-dozen functions."

"Damn," Danny said, almost stopping cold before he remembered to keep walking. "Damn, we need to get him into Armsmaster's workshop!"

"Why's that?" Taylor asked, opening the door for her father. They walked gratefully into a blast of air-conditioning.

"Because he does miniaturization and efficiency, condensed parts and stuff like that. Adding modularity and multi-purpose design into that would make them both exponentially more powerful," he said. "Now, no more of that talk until we're seated. Figure out what you want."

They checked the menu board and made their picks, made their orders and paid with credit card. They sat, and waited for their order to get delivered. He took a couple napkins to mop at his forehead and scalp, wiping away sweat.

"It's about time to get you a haircut," Taylor said. "At this point you either cut it short or you look like you're trying for the comb-over."

"No comb-over," he said. "Okay, haircut it is. Now then, we should put those two working together, same projects, same workspace. I really think they'd make a huge jump in what they could do."

"That would be something else," Taylor said. "Parahumans Online has already moved Armsmaster up to one of the world's top twenty tinkers, and he could keep climbing that ranking. Add Kid Win's talents, and they could rival Dragon. So, let's talk some. You've been really, really busy since Leviathan."

"So much to do," he said, shrugging. "Ah! Thank you!" he said, accepting the tray of food for the two of them, then setting them down to dole out their portions. "Hey, eat your own fries missy! Anyway, I'm working to keep the city sanitary until the trucks can start their work again," he said. "Cargo bikes can bring in the groceries, but they just lack the capacity to haul garbage like a truck does. And in way too many places, people are trying to solve their problem by stuffing garbage down the storm sewers instead of leaving it by the curb, or just flushing everything they want to throw away. It's as much work to keep the tunnels clear as it is to keep the streets clear. And you know what annoys me the most? I haven't had time to get back out to the west end where the damage was so minor. I have no idea what's going on with the Travelers at all. I'm pretty sure they're still pulling small thefts, but it's hard to be sure since we don't really have the police presence to investigate property crimes."

"Right, the Travelers," Taylor said. "I forgot about them. So technically every time Glenn calls this the Villain-Free City, he's lying, because the Travelers are still around somewhere."

"Since you said technically," Danny replied, "technically the last place they were suspected was an unincorporated suburb, so strictly speaking they are outside the city limits."

"That's lame," she said, munching a fry.

"It is. But Glenn's lame."

"True," she said. "Oh! Did you see that bust I got the other day, the drug smugglers?"

"I had Velocity send all the information to my head's up display, including the article in the paper."

"It's okay to call it a HUD, dad, you won't turn into a gamer nerd if you use the acronym."

"Screw you," he said with a grin, and she smiled back. It felt good to joke around with her. There had been bad times. He refused to dwell on them. "Anyway, it was a good catch, and I'm proud of you. It's tough, because not only can Danny Hebert not tell people how proud he is of his daughter Benthic, but even the Druid can't talk about it." He took a drink, then said a bit more somberly, "I'm concerned that this might be my fault. We've gotten rid of parahuman villains, so regular criminals don't have anything to fear here, and I've been very lenient on drug offenses so far. So I shouldn't be surprised that my actions have tempted the cartels into taking a run at us."

She frowned sternly. "That's not on you. We arrested them and sent them to trial because it's their fault they made that decision. It's not your fault, got it?"

"Got it. By the way, Oni Lee says hello."

"Does he?" she said, surprised and a bit delighted. "That's great, he's been making so much progress!"

"It's compounded," he said. "The longer he goes without teleporting, the more of his own mind and his own initiative he recovers, and he starts remembering how to remember more. Basically, the doctors said some really, really complicated stuff. So this next week he'll make more progress than the past six weeks together. If he can avoid using his power, he'll be a fully and healthy human being in just a couple weeks, and ready to be discharged and given a job. But yeah, we got to talking, and I told him I have a daughter. And when it was time for me to leave, he told me to tell you hello. He's still imprinted on me like a baby duck, his worldview is focused around having a boss that tells him what to do. I think that'll be the last thing to leave him. But soon, it will leave him."

Taylor grinned. "Okay, yeah, status update. What's up with Circus and Trainwreck?"

"Circus is apparently making a living as a pool shark," Danny said, swirling a fry through the ketchup. "Perfect accuracy makes for a damn good hustler. It had been cards, but I advised against that. Trainwreck is still hanging out at the impound lot his friend set him up in. But, he showers a lot more now, and he gets out and walks around and is trying to have a social life. He's still inventing, but now he's making himself useful by repairing cars instead of cannibalizing them."

"I had my doubts," his daughter said. "I really didn't think that Circus was going to find a way in this world other than killing people or stealing stuff. I mean, hustling pool isn't great, but it's hard to see someone get hustled and not think they deserve it a little bit. And I'd always thought that Trainwreck was always so greasy and messy because he just had no social graces, but if he was confined to power armor I can see why he'd look like that. Okay, um, next, tell me what's going on with Dinah."

"She's using her powers to calculate the odds she can get her dad to give her a pony," Danny chuckled. "And, she's still a bit fixated on me. If she didn't have such a happy home life already I'd be a bit worried about it. She designed a costume for her future persona, Gambler. She wants me to get Parian to make it for her." He paused, and Taylor prompted him with a gesture. "Okay, Parian. She's going through some trouble right now. She's broken up with Flechette, and even though I told her to do it that still hurt my soul to hear about. They were just nuts about each other. She's stayed away from couture design, and is instead applying for a bank loan to open her own seamstress' shop, to do alterations and custom fittings. And, she's come out to her parents. I think I gave her bad advice, she's pushed herself really far and she's gonna suffer a lot before things get better for her."

"She needs to harden up," Taylor said. "People have to suffer to harden up. It sucks, but we didn't make those rules. Okay, uh, Panacea."

"She's been working even harder than she was when she was in the hospital curing cancer every day," Danny chuckled. "Turns out she's got a brilliant understanding of medical science, which shouldn't surprise anyone. She's been auditing classes at the university, taking notes, and she was talking about testing out of the last year of high school, taking college early, and getting her doctorate. And in between she's still going to the clinics to heal broken legs and heart disease. Though she's focusing more on birth defects these days, she says they're easier and the benefit is bigger. And she's been tinkering, if you will, with ways to make bodies better, not just healthier. She's not on human testing yet, but she's got some animal subjects she's been testing ideas out on."

"Whoa, mad scientist," the girl chuckled. "God, it's actually hard to believe she's only a year older than me. She acts more like she's your age."

"It can be hard to tell the difference between maturity and just being tired," he joked back. "You haven't asked about Uber and Leet, but I'll tell you: those guys are about two weeks from unveiling their creation. They've been working on a video game, and while I didn't understand much they repeated a few phrases so many times that I had to remember them. Uh, massively-multiplayer-PVP with absolutely authentic physics, destructible environment, zero-lag zero-latency. Apparently Leet invented one computer that coordinates a whole bunch of other computers so well that it beats most of the problems that normally come with this kind of game. It's a really popular genre, they expect to be literal billionaires after this."

"Whoa," Taylor said, nodding. "I'm impressed. But not surprised. I've never heard of any tinker or supergenius that wanted or loved an invention as much as Leet and Uber love video games. That kind of love makes a world of a difference. But then there's Squealer. I hear you're helping her out with her lawsuit? You know that if she wins that lawsuit she'll have enough money for some lawyers that can get her out of prison and she'll never face justice for the people she's killed."

"It's her intellectual property, she's earned the proceeds, even if she abuses them," Danny sighed, staring at his burger. "Besides, it's likely that her designs will save a hundred times as many people as she's killed. But only if they get out. And they only get out if she owns them, and not the Protectorate. So she needs to win this."

"But you gave that stuff to the Protectorate, why are you taking it away now?" she asked, dabbing mustard off her chin.

"Someone had to see them work right before they would make an offer on them," he said, and took a drink.

"Oh shit," Taylor said, her eyes wide as they focused behind him. "Oh, shit dad. Oh shit look at that."

Danny turned around, followed her eyes. The television in the corner of the room was tuned to a local station that was showing the local news. And the view right now was from the Boardwalk, watching an Asian woman walking down the street, heading towards the Leviathan monument. His first impression was Bakuda, but this woman did not wear a gas mask, and she wore heavy armor completely unlike the mad bomber. And she carried a minigun, a massive belt-fed Gatling gun that normally was mounted on a heavy vehicle like a Humvee or a helicopter. She carried it like a handbag. Her armor was covered in gruesome trophies, scalps and ears stapled to the blood-red metal. "Oh shit it's Butcher," Taylor murmured. The woman approached the railing of the monument, and teleported past it with a pair of concussive blasts and gouts of flame. She strode to the spot in front of the spire, and turned, and stood. Exactly where Danny had stood.

And then she spoke one word: "Druid."

"Fuck you Glenn," Danny murmured. His stomach somersaulted, flopped over, and tried to drop completely out of his body.

* * *

"Okay, I'm going to be right in your ear," Lisa said as the Druid strapped into his armor. Velocity and Miss Militia and Triumph were helping him into his gear while Assault drove the jet. They were circling the Boardwalk, mustering rats from the surrounding areas to give him an advantage. "Your asset here is that she has no regeneration and that armor of hers is not decorative, it's functional. She is only somewhat more durable than a regular human. If you can hurt her, it'll stick. But she feels no pain, so this will be tough. It's a war of attrition, you need to stay safe and hurt her any way you can. She's got a ton of powers, teleportation, strength, perfect aim, supersenses, danger sense, projected pain, a rage aura that can make you go crazy and make mistakes, and the ability to fester wounds. You can't afford to take any hits from her at all, okay?"

"Got it," he said. "This is going to be a ton harder than it sounds."

"Yes," Lisa said, too quickly. "Okay, the other thing to know is that you can't kill her. If you kill her, you become the next Butcher. All that power, all that homicidal savagery, all those memories and voices in your head."

"But she doesn't feel pain, and so it's going to be really hard to stop her without killing," Danny pointed out.

"Yeah. We know," Lisa said into his ear. He shouldered on the last plate and worked his way into the cape. "And, you absolutely won't be able to negotiate with her the way you did the Undersiders."

"I expected that," he said. "Shit, wish I could bring the whole team for this."

"She called you out. And if you get your team, she gets hers. It's not as big a help as you'd think," Lisa said. "Now, she could have weaknesses we've never heard of, so try everything. Throw it all, see what sticks. You won't be able to dodge anything, that's a given because of her power. But you're wearing your armor, and it's pretty high grade. It's rated against high-penetration bullets, so there's a very real chance that you'll be all right until you can bring her down. Try to keep her on the move, it disrupts her agony projection power, and stay clear of her rage aura or you _will_ make fatal mistakes. Now, you're locked and loaded with Armsmaster's prediction software in your helmet, and I know you've practiced with it a little bit so it should help. Hopefully it gives you an edge against her danger sense. Try to wound her, we need her stopped without killing her."

Danny shook his hands out and tried not to hyperventilate. He was going to fight a supervillain. For real. Up close, personal, armed and loaded for bear. When he had started fighting crime he had promised himself it would never come to this. He'd be a block away, anonymous, behind several buildings worth of cover, no danger to himself, just helping out any way he could without taking any personal risks. And now he was doing it. He had to wonder if he had just had his last conversation with Taylor, if he was going to die today.

"I can't do this," he gasped. "Get me out of this armor, set me down someplace else. Let her stand there on her own for a few hours, it doesn't mean anything. We'll just ignore her. Or drop a bomb on her, I don't know. But don't make me do this, okay? Guys?"

"If we let you bug out now, it'll just be one villain after another calling us out, making us look bad," Miss Militia said, clapping her hands onto his shoulders. "Get a grip on yourself, use the weapons we've given you, you're going to be fine."

Assault looked over his shoulder. "I know what'll help," he said, and thumbed open the CD case strapped to the wall. He flipped a few pages, picked a disk, and slapped it into the console for the intercom sound system.

Danny froze as the first chords of "Eye of the Tiger" pulsed through the air. "Oh, that's just cheating," he growled towards Assault.

"Whatever. Get in there and kick her ass," Assault grinned, and the cargo hatch dropped open.

"I'll do it," he said. "But, you know, if I die, tell my daughter I died thinking of her. And tell Glenn that I died calling him an asshole."

The Druid of Brockton Bay strode out, bouncing on his toes a little bit as the rats came streaming out of the city to surround him. The gnarled wooden staff was in his hands, and birds flew in to circle overhead and around. Howls burst through the air as the dogs approached.

Butcher looked up at the birds overhead, watching them carefully. Her face broke its impassivity long enough to show a bit of wry amusement. "Tricks," she said, and then her face shifted to utter contempt. Danny vaulted over the railing, gripped up on the staff, and nodded towards her with grim resolve.

Butcher looked bored as she pressed the trigger of her massive weapon, and a spray of bullets pounded straight into Danny's chest, almost one on top of the other. The force of them lifted him off his feet and threw him backwards, slamming against the railing and pinning him there. Mice in his cloak were crushed to death and a dozen birds fell out of the air at once. The armor held, though he could feel where there were going to be bruises on his chest later. He tried to rally back, swinging the rest of his birds into play. He swept them towards her eyes to blind her, while rats lunged towards her legs. They were unable to sweep her legs, her stance was well-set and her armor and gun made her heavy enough to be hard to dislodge. So instead they gnawed, working at the plates that protected her heels and hamstrings. She teleported a few feet closer to him, and she disappeared and reappeared in a gout of flame and shock that killed a score of rats each time.

A bird flew into the small of her back and exploded like a grenade, flinging her down to the ground. She snarled savagely, and for the first time she looked invested in the fight. She teleported back to her feet, killing rats in a wide range, and brought her gun to bear again. The bullets rattled out under the roar of the gun barrel, sweeping around to kill the mechanical birds. Each bullet hit a target, even if they had to curve in the air to do it. He lost the other grenade birds, the thermite-bird, the containment-foam birds, the birds that trailed invisible wires and had huge high-voltage batteries to simulate a bolt of lightning. Even the birds with the boom microphones and long-lens cameras or the laser range-finders. But before he could work a new plan to deal with the loss of the drones, he was hit with a crippling agony.

It took his breath away, and the world went white and then gray. He slumped back, his muscles locked, his whole body on fire. Butcher swung her gun his way, and she pushed the trigger down, held it down. She watched as the bullets pounded into him, arms and legs and chest and face, slamming him like a thousand hammers against his hard-shelled armor. He twitched and flailed under the assault. The bruises on his skin spread, joined together. The wounds she gave festered with a little time, the injuries almost healing in reverse as they spread. And those thousand hammer blows multiplied, he could feel something wet pouring down his chest as the skin ruptured and split. The small bones of his hands cracked and fractured, his eyes swelled shut and the cartilage of his nose cracked audibly.

But somehow he managed to mount a defense. He raised the staff and pressed four knots in the wood with his two hands, and a hum and buzz surrounded the top of the staff. Bullets that entered the blurred air disintegrated, turned to smoke as they were broken down into components so small they floated on the air. Literally vaporized. She released the trigger, amused at this development. Danny tried to pull himself upright, to advance on her with the staff held up. His right hand thumbed aside a panel of fake wood to expose a patch of golden metal at the core of the staff, and he pressed his hand to it and concentrated.

Butcher teleported immediately before the blast of lightning went off, appearing just a foot to the side as the beam of electricity streamed out like a laser too bright to look at directly. She swung the gun to the side and pulled the trigger again, and the bullets arced in the air to hit him from the side, curving around the blurred nano-saw projected from the staff. He was thrown sideways and the staff fell from his nerveless grasp as the agony struck again. He had no control over his thoughts, his limbs, or his rats. There was just a relentless beating that went on and on and on. He screamed anew when his kneecap shattered, then his clavicle. His throat was raw, his lungs felt like they were filling up with fluids. His fingerbones crackled as they broke all in a row. He could smell vomit but he couldn't recall having thrown up, and his whole world was a merciless unending pain.

She strode closer, walking across the field of rats. Their bones sounded like potato chips under her feet. The ammo box ran dry and the gun's chambers clanged open, she dropped the Gatling gun and walked closer. She smirked as her rage aura kicked in, filing him with a blinding hate that rivaled the pain he felt, agony warring with anger as he twitched helplessly in his failing body. So many tendons torn, bones broken, that she didn't need to immobilize him, he was quite helpless. She reached back to the back side of her shoulder and pulled a contraption from a sheath there. It unfolded into a compound bow, heavily built and sturdily reinforced for her superhuman strength. She bent down and ran her hands through the debris of dead rats and broken glass and gun brass, and when her hand came up again it held an arrow. A long, triangular arrowhead looked perfect for piercing hard-shelled armor, she nocked it to the bowstring and sighted down on him. It was aimed at his heart, a single killshot.

And then a blank-faced Asian man in a hospital gown was clinging to her back, drawing a kitchen knife across her throat. A huge gout of blood erupted from her neck, and she dropped in place, the arrow falling to the ground. And Oni Lee stood in place, his face twitching as the Butcher essence transferred into him. A dozen homicidal maniacs in his head, a rush of new powers and strength. The force of the Butchers, I through XIV, stormed forward to overwhelm his will. And Oni Lee's eyes stretched wide, and another of him appeared. Both of them took a deep breath, and three of them tipped their heads back. Four of him opened their mouths so wide that the tendons in his neck stood out, five of him screamed. Six of him flung their hands to his head, seven of them slumped to fall on their knees. Eight Oni Lees dragged their hands down their faces, nine Oni Lees crumpled forward as their screams ran out of air. And then one by one they vanished in a puff of white dust and smoke, leaving only one behind. He looked up, blank-faced, impassive, and implacable, as the crowd rushed forward. He didn't make a move as the heroes rushed his way, led at the front by Panacea and Circus, with a ponytailed man behind them who was only barely recognizable as Trainwreck.

Circus posted herself between Oni Lee and the fallen Druid, wary as if watching him for a hostile move. Trainwreck helped Panacea remove his helmet, gingerly and carefully, while pulling his hood forward so that onlookers could not make out his face. Panacea laid her hands on his face, and shuddered at what she felt. She whispered a few words, and the other heroes began unfastening his armor, laying it aside piece by piece to expose the seeping, twisted ruin that was his body. His thin frame showed every broken bone and burst artery, and the cameras showed the world what the Druid was willing to suffer to keep his city safe.

It took her an hour and a half to finish healing him. The crowd gathered around grew every minute of that time. When he finally stood up with help from Dauntless and Armsmaster, a cheer went up from the crowd. Circus and Trainwreck melted back into the crowd, fading from the scene even as Danny gave them both a small wave goodbye. He stumbled over to Oni Lee, who someone had draped a blanket over sometime in the past hour and a half.

"You gave up your mind for me," Danny said to the assassin. Oni Lee just stood there, staring, waiting for orders. "Oni Lee, do you feel anything? Do you hear any voices, in your mind?" Oni Lee just stood there, staring, waiting for orders. "Oni Lee, do you hear the Butchers?" Nothing. He sighed. "Oni Lee, go back with your doctors, and help them help you. I will be by to give you orders as soon as I can. No teleporting until I say otherwise."

Oni Lee nodded, and walked away. Danny sagged on his legs, and let himself be bustled into the back of the VTOL.

* * *

Danny dialed the phone at the side of his hospital bed.

"Director Chambers here."

"Glenn?"

"Yeah?"

"You're an asshole."

"Yeah."

"And I told you this would happen."

"... yeah."

"Glenn?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm taking the rest of this week off."

"Yeah."

Danny hung up. He called Taylor.

* * *

He looked up and down the street. "Okay, I'm impressed."

"You were meant to be," Dauntless said, bracing his hands on his hips. "Mayor Christner and Glenn went on television just hours after your fight with Butcher, and they said the reason you lost was because you'd been spending weeks without rest cleaning up the city and trying to take care of things. So, they said it was the city's fault for not helping you more during those weeks. They got a bond initiative going and diverted a ton of city funds to get this done."

The streets weren't repaired, but they were improved somewhat. Most of the roads had at least one lane open on either side, with metal planks laid out at the intersections so that slow traffic could cross over the ruptured fissures in the pavement. And planks of wood at the side for bicycles and pedestrians to cross on. The traffic signals were still on blinking red, indicating a four-way stop. No traffic was allowed on the roads other than service vehicles for the time being, but as districts were cleared and fully repaired the normal operation would commence again. For now, people commuted by bus or bike, but garbage pickups were back on schedule, mail was being delivered, police were patrolling, ambulances were at work, construction crews were able to move deeper into the city to repair more of the roads at once, and trucks full of food and water were making regular deliveries on schedule.

"I have to say, it's a vast improvement," Danny admitted. "The cynic in me wants to see those contracts and bond resolutions, our mayor has a long history of corrupt real estate developments and I think he stands to make a dozen fortunes on this sort of tragedy. On the other hand, maybe I was too hard on Glenn."

"You probably were, but I think he understands why you said what you said. Still, an apology wouldn't go amiss," Dauntless suggested.

"Yes, fine. And by the way, thank you for loaning me your spear for the fight against Butcher. It was my big weapon, and I know you've invested years of your energy into it. It's a huge help, and I know it means a lot to you so it means a lot to me that you allowed me to borrow it."

"No worries," the big hero said. "It came back to me in one piece. But a lot of people already figured out that it's my spear you were using, covered in Armsmaster's fake staff and those nano-weapons of his. So, now they're starting to realize that we were propping you up and that all that power wasn't really yours. Clever folks on the Internet are already figuring out all your tricks. The drone birds, holograms, everything."

Danny chuckled, running his fingers along the chestplate of his lightweight costume, the comfortable one that was just for show."Well, the end of an era. Looks like we might be done with the Druid and his fakery. But I realized that my power doesn't really come from armor or lightning or bombs. In the end, it's people. People who are willing to loan me extremely powerful weapons, for instance. People who are willing to spend weeks in a workshop working on equipment to help me. People who are willing to give me a ride to my destination, or pick the music that will bring out the best in me. People like Oni Lee who was willing to give up his mind and his identity to protect me against my orders. People like Trainwreck and Circus who were willing to try to protect me from Butcher XV. People like Glenn who will get the ferry going again and repair the streets even if it's an uphill battle. Lisa, who gave up the life she loved because she trusted me. I got a get-well card from Parian, thanking me for ruining her life. Panacea has helped me several times over and never seems to get tired of my requests. People like that are where power is. And I need to accept that, I need to be open about that. I need to tell them. Hiding behind a cloak and armor feels like I'm shutting people out, and that's not the direction I need to go."

Dauntless paused, staring off into the distance as a team of bicycle couriers cruised through a break in the slow traffic. "The Druid of Brockton Bay never really seemed to suit you. It wasn't your style. Some people can pull off cryptic and iconic looks. Myrddin can. Chevalier can. Eidolon really doesn't. Armsmaster for sure, and Triumph can pull it off more often than not, and he's barely out of training wheels."

"You do a damn fine job of iconic majesty yourself," Danny pointed out. "And maybe Eidolon has a hard time with his image, but I chat with him pretty regularly and he really grows on you."

"Kind of you to say. But you, you're down to earth. You're just not the guy that waves a spear and calls down lightning. It's not who you are."

Danny snorted a laugh. "I'm the guy that calls in a favor and gets your kid a nice job. But in my case, getting that kid a job dismantles a team of villains."

Dauntless nodded. "Exactly. Now that people are catching on to the trick, the Druid persona won't last much longer. I just wonder how Glenn is going to spin it."

Danny let a dozen ideas flit through his head, but none of them seemed Glenn enough. "I have no idea," he answered. "Hey, long as I've got you here, I was hoping to pick your brain. Have you ever heard of an outfit called Cauldron?"

"Well, sure. When you get the team leaders together, talking shop and sharing stories, it comes up with the other rumors and ghost stories. I've heard that Alexandria is actually an indestructible robot, and that the reason Legend can bend light is because he literally the center of the universe. I've heard that a scientist has found proof that the Manton Effect is proof that God exists. I've heard that one day the Endbringers will join together and wipe out continents with a single blow. And I've heard that there's a secret conspiracy that calls itself Cauldron and it is guarded by a boogeyman that nobody can beat and some people can buy powers from them."

Danny paused. "That's a hell of a thing. Being able to buy powers?"

Dauntless shrugged. "Like I said, you hear lots of things. Scion comes from the future, Myrddin comes from another dimension where magic is real, parahumans have always existed and in days of old we were hailed as gods. I've heard that Dragon has uploaded her consciousness to a computer and no longer has a physical body, and that some parahumans are triggered by alien abductions."

The tall, thin man considered all of this. "That helps me put it in context. So, would you say that there's more evidence for the Cauldron story than those other rumors?"

"I'd say that the stories say that anyone that snoops around too much might get a visit from the boogeyman to remind you not to snoop. Or just kill you and walk away," the team leader replied. "Look, either there's nothing there, or there's something there and you don't want it. Now, change the subject. What are you going to yell at people about now that the ferry is running?"

"The Boardwalk."

Dauntless laughed aloud, shaking his head and even leaning over to wheeze out the end of his belly laugh. "Of course you are. It's only the new centerpiece of the city's economy, the pet project of the mayor and the city council and the chamber of commerce. And our own director. Why wouldn't you pick that as the next item to receive the Wharf Rat treatment?"

"That seems uncharitable and un-called-for."

"It may seem that way," Dauntless said, still laughing to himself. "But really, what's wrong with the Boardwalk?"

"Enforcers."

"Oh," the other hero said, sagging somewhat. "Okay, yeah, maybe that. It's a bit... ugly."

Danny turned to face the other man directly. "It's way past ugly. A syndicate of business owners has hired their own private police force that disregards the law in favor of what's good for business. They use excessive force against people who have done nothing wrong but offend the wrong people. They mete out excessive punishments and there's rumors of much worse. They are a violent gang operating with public sanction, making their own rules and subverting the essence of the law itself."

"You understand that most of what you just said applies to us to? It's hard to be a superhero and speak out against private police forces without being a total hypocrite. The enforcers operate with the cooperation of the city just like the PRT and the Protectorate. The laws that make it possible for us to operate make it possible for them to operate."

Danny waved a finger. "Nuh uh. Don't make that comparison. We go after villains and parahuman criminals. We go after threats that are too dangerous and too deadly for police to handle. The enforcers go after bums and street kids, people too harmless and helpless for police to be bothered with. That is not the same thing at all, not by a long shot."

"And what do you intend to do about that?"

"Would you believe that it's better if you don't know?"

"Fine."

* * *

"You're doing that thing again," Taylor said. "Thousand-yard stare."

"Sorry," Danny said, and heaved a sigh. "It's just hard to be around here without remembering. I can't even tell you how badly it hurt, I just don't have the words. It's the kind of pain that changes your life."

She leaned in and gave him a hug from the side. "It'll be okay, you'll forget it and everything will be fine. Just keep your eyes on the crowd."

He nodded and tried to keep something or someone between him and the monument. He tried not to think that he had suffered, nearly died, for the sake of entertaining Glenn's audience or satisfying his journalists. He tried not to think that he had let himself get bullied into nearly turning his daughter into an orphan for the sake of an advertising campaign for the local tourism board and the Local Businessmen's Guild. A red thread of anger flared through his thoughts, and it grounded like lightning on the enforcers.

The two of them walked along the new boards, already distressed to look like they'd been there for decades dredged up from the beach. Bollards with rope railings separated the walkway from the waterway, this part of the city didn't have any beaches to speak of but it did have spectacular views over the water. All the sand and surf was to the south side of the bay, where the city was constantly trying to build resort hotels only to find again and again that the bedrock was buried too deep and the sand was too soft to root a foundation in. Ahead of them was the Protectorate tower, a weird parallel to his first week as a hero when he had disguised himself to walk in their front door.

"Got one," he said. "I can stop this before it goes too far.."

"If you stop this one, you only help one victim," Taylor reminded him, pitching her voice low so nobody would overhear. "Catch a dozen, you can help hundreds of people. Catch a few dozen, you can prove that there's a pervasive culture and you can keep this from ever happening again. But if you butt in, the enforcers will know exactly who their enemy is."

A hundred and fifty yards away, a thick-necked man with a blue polo shirt and navy blue slacks was throwing a teen runaway up against a wall and pinning the kid in place with his boot while he snapped out his extensible baton. And then he proceeded to beat the hell out of the kid, grinding the breath out of the teenager to make sure there wasn't enough air to make significant noise. And a rat in the corner with a camera strapped to its back recorded the entire thing. He heard the whimpers and the moans, and he flinched, his knuckles clenching as he kept walking with his daughter like nothing was wrong. He could see the bruises spreading, bullets hammering against his armor... he shook himself out of his funk. What the enforcer was dealing out was nothing like the agony he had suffered from Butcher. Except in its principal, its cruelty, and the complete lack of necessity for it. And he had to make himself leave well enough alone, had to pretend like everything was all right. And he let the enforcer finish. He chose to not save someone he could save.

It felt like the fight with Butcher all over again, right in his chest. Every time the teenager kicked, he felt it against his ribs. He had to shake himself again to pull away from the scene.

He picked up another enforcer up ahead, and the local rats had plenty of memories of this man's violence, he was one to watch. Danny slowed up to look at T-shirts, Taylor stayed by his side and went through a rack of children's Druid costumes. They would probably be on clearance as soon as the Wharf Rat announced that he was retiring the Druid of Brockton Bay identity. It seemed that the revelation that the Druid's powers were technological and not parahuman had actually increased the merchandising and not reduced it; Danny tried not to scowl at the matching sets of Dauntless and Druid with the staff and spear that fit together with _authentic lightning action_!

The teenager was released, kicked away to hobble off to whatever passed for home. The camera rat scrambled away, ready to find another spot to take shots from. The second enforcer had stepped into the crowd and pulled out a young woman wearing a bikini top with cutoff shorts, her brown hair twisted into something that could turn into dreadlocks soon, with deeply tanned skin and badly-worn flipflops. He was asking where she was from, she replied she was here to visit the beach and came up the Walk to get something to eat. He asked to see her driver's license so he could see she was from out of town, and she balked. He grabbed for her purse and slapped her back when she objected.

"More shantytown scum," he declared when he found her address. "Get off the Boardwalk and get back on your side of town, shanty," he snarled.

"I can walk here!" she insisted, snatching back her purse. "I've still got rights!" And then he started teaching her differently.

"Shit," Danny said. He needed to keep the rat in place, he needed to keep the enforcers from finding out that the Wharf Rat had turned his attention on them. But he couldn't let this go for a minute. He slipped off the Boardwalk, away from the press of people, and ran through the alleyway backing the shops. This space was just for dumpsters and garbage cans and the trucks that emptied them, and the occasional criminal assault or sex crime. The ground was unsteady and there were hidden obstacles all over, but he navigated them easily at a dead run, stumbling only when he fumbled in his pockets for a few seconds. He crossed the next block in good time, moving nearly silently as he did.

And he had a roll of quarters in his fist when he punched the enforcer in the side of his head. He felt his knuckles break, and he switched the roll to his other hand for the follow-up punch. The enforcer dropped to the ground, and Danny started kicking. Bruises bloomed and spread and knitted together into an unbroken sheet of red and blue. Taylor grabbed him from behind and pulled him back, then grabbed the girl with the torn clothes and helped her up, tugging her away from the scene. Danny reached down and carefully maneuvered the man's body, bracing his ankle against a fencepost and his hip against the wall, with some space on either side of the rest of his leg. Then he took two running steps and kicked a field-goal right at the man's knee, following through, smashing it in half. The scream stopped pedestrian traffic for half a block in either direction, and Danny walked away, following after Taylor.

Taylor had a hard time understanding after the fact. "Holy shit Dad," she said. "That's over the top. That's beyond the pale. Jesus. Okay, maybe it's time that the enforcers learned that the rats are after them. If this is the only way you can help them without using the rats, we'll just use the rats."

"The plan was good," he said. "We just didn't anticipate some asshole would be bold enough to grab a girl off the street to rape her in an alleyway in the middle of his shift."

She eyed him skeptically. "So, that was a onetime thing? Unexpected circumstances, unlikely to repeat?"

"Yes," he said, wincing as he adjusted the wrappings on his hand. "I'd say I'm very unlikely to do that again."

His daughter tried to smile but it was weak and brittle. "It's just I have a hard time believing you, Dad. For one thing, we'd only been out there for half an hour on your first day before you went medieval on that guy. And for another thing, you had the quarters on you already. You were prepared for this."

He took a deep breath and let it out slow, counting from ten. "I pack the quarters like I pack my keys or my phone. It's been part of my kit every day for months. It doesn't mean that I was planning to beat some guy today." He forced his own smile, and while it looked better than the one she was faking, it stung him to see her incredulity.

* * *

The middle of the night was a surprisingly quiet time for superheroes, very few crimes happen at the witching hour and fewer still that require a superhero's intervention. The hours after sunset and right at last call were busy, but midnight is a good downtime. And since Danny was mostly doing patrols these days, scheduled on his own recognizance, he was sleeping well at the middle of the night. After all, he had earned some privileges after the past several weeks. But despite those privileges, he did not expect the Protectorate to deliver a woman to his bed. Especially not Mouse Protector.

She yelled out a "yipe!" as she fell full body on top of him, and then scrambled back to fall off the bed and onto the floor with a thump. She lay there for a few seconds before she called out "I'm okay!"

Danny turned on the bedside lamp. "Mouse Protector? What the hell?"

"Hey partner," she said, grinning. "I was just chilling at my place and I thought 'wouldn't it be fun to drop in on my buddy Wharf Rat?' and so I did and here I am," she said. "What happened to your hand?"

"Street tiddlywinks, we play for pinkies," he said. "Could you have called ahead?"

"Street ti- holy shit I should write that down," she said, grinning manically. "Everyone tells me how dour you are, Captain No-Fun of the No-Fun Zone. Do I just bring out the best in you?"

"I think it's my rebel nature. You want me to be the Abbott to your Costello and I just have to flip the script. I should get dressed."

"You should. Since you're up, let's go get a pizza. Where's the best place to get a three-cheese pizza at this hour?"

"I have no idea. Could you hand me that robe? And/or turn around?"

"How can you not know? Every hero I've ever met, in any city, knew more about local late-night restaurants than a food critic specializing in cab drivers and potheads."

"The only grease trap I eat at is Fugly Bob's, and that's a burger place. When I eat pizza I make it myself from scratch."

"Okay, that sounds amazing, and I applaud you for that, but it doesn't get me any closer to that three-cheese awesomeness."

"You're really not going to turn around, are you?"

"Fine. Prude."

When Danny Hebert walked out of his room with a woman, Velocity and Battery both stopped their conversation mid-word. Velocity took his feet down off the console and sat up straight. "Dude, I don't even know how you did that, and I was the king of RAs in college before I got powers."

"Velocity, you've met Mouse Protector before. Mouse, you remember Velocity and Battery."

The two Brockton Bay natives traded a look. "I've never seen you in anything but a helmet with ears," Battery said. "I was half-sure you really had ears like that."

"So, where's the best place to get a three-cheese pizza this time of night around here?" their visitor asked. She was wearing a pair of his cargo shorts that hung past her knees and a plaid button-up shirt rolled up to her elbows. He had no shoes that would even begin to fit her, so she wore her Mouse Protector boots and hoped for the best.

"Of course three-cheese," Battery sighed. "Of course you're that committed to the theme. Okay, um, you'll be looking for Dolentino's on Lord Street."

"No way," Velocity said. "Moonstone Bar down by Cherry Circle a block from the campus bookstore. They've got a kitchen that runs all night to last call, and while I wouldn't wish their meat-lover's pizza on my worst enemy, they do something with melty cheese that is magical, hand to God."

Battery looked back at Danny and Mouse. "Go with Moonstone. Dolentino's is good, but it's not magical."

They took a bus to Cherry Circle, since the VTOL was going to be in high demand as last call approached, and it was conspicuous. The Moonstone was loud and boisterous, and the local college's colors were in wide representation. They made their way straight past posturing frat boys and coy sorority girls and hard-drinking grad students, heading straight to the bartender.

"Hey, can we get the cheese pizza?" Danny asked.

The bartender's face showed a crushing disappointment like a puppy had died. "Dude, no, Tyler quit. Like, two weeks ago. He's running a food truck out by the Boardwalk these days."

Danny checked his watch. "Is he still open late or does he only work during the day?"

The bartender raised helpless hands. "I have no idea, sorry."

They headed back out. "So, do you want to hit the Boardwalk just in case he's serving the late-night crowd, or just wait for tomorrow?" Danny asked.

"You say that like I won't track this man down to his home and wake him up just to make me a magical three-cheese pizza," she said, her eyes glinting.

"Except you wouldn't actually," he reminded her.

"You don't think I'd go that far for melty cheese?" she pressed, leaning forward.

"I'm less sure than I was five seconds ago."

There was no sign of a food truck operating within four blocks of the Boardwalk, but some of the smarter local rats knew the truck in question and their memories of it only included sunshine. "Looks like Tyler went into business for himself so he could keep his own profits and set his own hours," Danny said. "Sorry Mouse."

"Oh, it's okay," she said, sighing. "Tell the truth, I wasn't really all that hungry. I just make a point to sample cheese pizza in every city I visit. Let's get back to the tower and call it a night."

"Deal. No more appearing in my bed."

"We'll agree to disagree."

"Sounds like we'll disagree on agreeing."

"Ouch. Easy with those burns, man."

The next day they walked the Boardwalk over and over, with Taylor keeping a tight grip on her father so he would not hare off for another righteous beatdown, and Mouse Protector hanging on his other side mostly just to annoy him. They ate funnel cake and drank sodas, they shopped for kitschy merchandise and they posed for pictures, and they documented several abuses of power and human rights in the name of local commerce. They stopped for lunch to each three-cheese pizza that was just as good as Velocity had promised, and occasionally Mouse Protector would pester them about Danny's hand or try to get them to slip up. And in the late afternoon, an hour before sunset, Glenn called him on his cell phone.

"Hello," he said noncommittally.

"What's this I hear about you messing around with the Boardwalk and the Local Businessmen's Guild?"

"Guilty."

"Why?"

"Because someone should," Danny said. "The enforcers are a blight on the city. Police power should not be handed off to anyone that pays enough money to beat up whoever they want."

"Well that sounds like hypocrisy, because you and your teammates aren't cops either, but you seem to have that same privilege. Are you a blight on the city?"

"We protect the city from Endbringers. We don't kick scruffy kids in the neck because they're not good scenery for the tourists."

"We're going to have a talk. You come back to the tower and-"

The phone was plucked from Danny's hand. "Excuse me sir," said a thick-necked man in blue polo shirt and navy slacks. "Boardwalk security. Could you come with me?" He ended the call and tucked Danny s phone into his own pocket.

The rat in the alleyway heard eight heartbeats from that direction, meaning nine enforcers total. "No, I don't think I will," Danny said.

The thick-necked man just grabbed hold of Danny's wrist and twisted it behind his back, marching him into the alley. Two more bullish bodies in polo shirts stepped out from behind Dumpsters and blocked the path behind to cut off Taylor and the Mouse Protector. "You should stay out of this," one of them grunted.

"You guys really shouldn't do this," Taylor advised him. "There's a lot you don't know here."

"Fuck off," he replied.

"Really you-"

"Fuck off," he replied.

Mouse Protector pulled a length of planking out of a garbage bin, about sword-length, and gave it a spin. "Good enough," she said.

Two meaty fists slammed into Danny's stomach, and another into the side of his head. Their knuckles didn't break. "Hold his leg," one said, backing up for a running kick. A rat snuck up behind him and snipped through his Achilles tendon and he dropped in place, screaming.

"Fuck, did you see that?" one of the others said, still punching Danny while he looked the other way. "I think that was a rat!"

"What? Wait, so the Druid's nearby?" the one next to him said, twisting Danny's arm hard enough to strain the socket.

"I love that guy, we should get an autograph," one said while smashing his elbow into Danny's mouth.

"Except that rat just bit Stang, so it can't be Druid, he's a good guy," said another one while he kicked Danny's knee backwards.

And then the Mouse Protector teleported to him and started laying them out with her plank while he lay screaming in the alley. Her board collided with heads and shoulders and hips, stunning the big men and getting herself some room. But the ones she stunned first were getting up, pulling out their batons. She tried to pull Danny up to retreat back out of the alley, but her superhuman agility and stamina did not make her unusually strong. She leaped into the fray, spinning and bounding as she swept around with her club to clear some space and get them away from Danny. Two of them still blocked Taylor from helping, and the Mouse Protector couldn't help her without letting up on the other seven to gang up on her.

And then another pair of chisel-like teeth clipped through a hamstring, and an enforcer went down heavy. More came running from every direction, if he had a little time he could resolve this. But the Boardwalk didn't have a lot of rats, not enough hiding places with all the recent construction. So for him to monitor the area, he had to spread them thin. Not enough to disable more than one or two guys, they needed numbers and position to use the bear-baiting maneuver. And the telescoping batons the enforcers held gave them enough reach and force that Mouse Protector was forced to spend more time defending herself, rather than pressing the offensive. The tide was turning, and he wasn't sure the rats would arrive in time to turn it back.

"Oh shit! Guys, fucking stop!" one of the two blockading enforcers yelled, spinning in place with Taylor's phone in his hands. "This guy s the fucking Druid!"

The seven of them froze in place, while Mouse Protector stood over him, holding her plank at the ready, and they all froze as the men realized what had happened here. And then the rats arrived, and just _flayed_ them.

* * *

"It's like you're not happy unless you're dancing on the edge of getting kicked out!" Glenn railed, gesturing wildly. "With Piggot you antagonized her directly, went after her power and her pride until she was looking for opportunities to throw you out without besmirching her own reputation. But now that you've got a big softy like me that lets you get away with stuff, you do this! How am I supposed to deal with this? How do we bounce back from this? You're starting fights with security guards, crippling them, disfiguring them horribly, and nearly killing them. There's no spin on this! The best spin just keeps you out of the Birdcage!"

"There's a lot of accumulated damage to the knee here, mind if I just clean that up while I'm at it?" Panacea asked.

"Go for it," he said, then turned back to Glenn. "I caught a rapist in the act and I stopped him. Maybe I went too far. It was the heat of the moment dealing with a rapist in the act of raping someone. Get that? I've got the evidence because I was building a case against the whole organization and I was going to take them down with him. And then nine of his friends came looking for me, abducted me out of a public space, crippled me, and then showed every intention of beating me to death. So then, after my second near-death beating in the past week, I reacted strongly in my own defense and the defense of my daughter who was on scene. And you're going to make me out to be the bad guy here assaulting these innocent security guards? They're _enforcers_ , Director Chambers. Learn the local dialect."

"Well, they didn't know they were defending a rapist," Glenn answered back.

"Is that the best you can do for making excuses for them?" Danny scoffed. "They made a premeditated effort to abduct, torture, and kill me in cold blood, and you think that none of them knew what their buddy was up to just a few hundred feet away while he was still on the clock?"

The director sighed, and crumpled into a chair. "Of course they're in the wrong. Jesus, there's almost nothing a man can do to earn a meaningful beating like rape. But I have to explain this stuff, reason with people, I have to show our side of it. And I have to show that we're safe, and in control, and we're good for business."

"I'm gonna repair some liver damage while I'm here," Panacea said.

"Thank you," he said towards her, then turned back to the director. "I understand the tight spot you're in. It's a rock and a hard place. They're utterly corrupt. You have to convince them that we're only interested in the kind of crime they're not perpetrating, but that we'll never interfere with the crimes they are perpetrating. You need to tell them that they will always profit from exploiting and coercing other people and make them feel like they've got the moral high ground at the same time. You represent law and order but they only want order, I get that. I'm sure every day you have to choke back the urge to remind them that they're the bad guys and they don't get to dictate terms to superheroes. But Glenn, just because you're glad-handing them above the table and taking their money, doesn't mean that those of us doing the street work should compromise over when a man is allowed to rape a woman or beat a kid half to death. That's how we divide our labor, right? I stop bad people from doing bad things, and you say the sweet words so they don't use their influence to shut us down. And someday we'll have this place cleaned up so that you don't have to sugar-coat the news and play coy parlor games with embezzlers and racketeers."

"Don't need this now," Glenn said, slouched so deep that his belly pushed up and his chin pushed down until he was talking into his own belly.

"You don't need all these free radicals do you? And I could adjust these neotonous hormone levels..."

"Glenn, I know it sucks. But everyone in this city knows that what the enforcers do is wrong. They look the other way, and I think we've proven why that is, eh?" He gestured down at himself, in a hospital bed again with Panacea fixing him up again. "The Boardwalk shop owners put themselves above the law. And for the people of Brockton Bay to really and truly believe that things are going to be all right, and that the good guys are going to win, they need to see the enforcers thrown out. This is a city where people who live in the wrong place get the shit beaten out of them for walking into the wrong area to see the pretty parts of the city. Nobody with a conscience can defend that."

The director just muttered curse words to himself while Panacea worked.

"So what happens to those enforcers that know my secret identity now? And probably Mouse Protector, too?"

He kept murmuring swear words at his stomach for a minute, then looked up at Danny. "You'd like to know that, huh? Well, this is the part that gets really expensive. They're going to be monitored to make sure they don't tell anyone. Electronics, audio, mail, every conversation they have is going to be checked to make sure they don't tell. And if they do ever tell, they get immediately sent to trial for conspiracy to commit murder with a superpower and accessory to attempted murder with a superpower. They're not allowed to leave the area, and they'll need to check in regularly. It's almost a lifetime house arrest. And is it expensive to assign all that personnel to keeping an eye on them? You bet it is. But do we take those efforts to protect your ungrateful butt? You bet we do. Nine of them, Rat. Round-the-clock surveillance on nine people for life because you couldn't stick with a professional investigation."

"You're calling me Rat again."

"You're acting like a rat again," Glenn said, frowning.

"Brace yourself," Panacea said. "This is gonna feel weird." And then she slid the knee back into place with a deep 'thock!' sound.

"Truth in advertising," Danny said, rubbing his hands up and down the joint as if to massage pins and needles out of it.

The acting director sat up straight and then pushed himself to a standing position. "All right then. You call me before you start any more crises, okay? I'm tired of being blindsided by stuff." He walked out in such a funk that it took a minute for either Panacea or Danny to talk for a minute.

"So," he said. "You do a bioscan on anyone you touch, don't you?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Lots of parahumans, right?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think you could tell the difference between someone that got their powers naturally and someone who was treated by an outside party?"

She turned and looked at him, up and down his face to see if he was kidding or lying. "You're saying that not all powers are the result of a natural trigger event?" she asked.

"I m saying that. And it looks like it's connected to some bigger mysteries. I just figured that you have more hands-on experience with parahuman biology that anyone I'm likely to ever find again."

She frowned. "I have never noticed anything. But I'll make a point of checking from now on, to see what I can see."

"Thanks," he said. "I owe you. Again."

She patted his hand, smiled, and got up to leave the room. "By the way, I think that Mouse Protector really likes you," she said, pausing in the doorway.

"That sucks," he said, sighing. "I'm really committed to the single-father image, you know? Just one of those guys that think that dating again is disrespectful to the dead."

"Not a healthy attitude," the girl replied. "Moving on is important."

"I'm not really a poster-child of healthy attitudes," he pointed out.

"You raise a good point. I'll see you next time."


	15. Chapter 15

"All hands to the tower, all hands to the tower!" rang out over his earpiece. "We are currently making a Class S announcement to the Protectorate, requesting assistance from all cities." The sirens began howling, and the lights flashed to indicate the path to the nearest Endbringer shelter.

"What's the Class S, Lisa?" Danny asked, opening the throttle on the low-slung supercar. He veered up onto the sidewalks after using a dozen eyes to make sure it was clear, zooming around a knot of traffic then barreling through an intersection without slowing.

"The Slaughterhouse Nine. They hijacked a train and are headed this way. I don't have eyes on Shatterbird, so I'm assuming she's close. Stay away from windows, secure anything you've got with glass components. Druid, lose the glasses. Everyone else, be careful about your helmet visors."

"Belay that," Armsmaster cut into the transmission. "There are no silica components in the helmet visors. But keep in mind most of the electronics could potentially fail, depending on how small a glass component that Shatterbird can affect."

Danny looked up at the glass canopy above his head. It was probably some sort of transparent ceramic. And even if it wasn't, he trusted his armor to protect him against falling glass. And he didn't wear his glasses under the helmet, so he was all right. "I've never heard of anyone calling a Class S threat for the Nine," he said.

"They do qualify," Lisa said. "And you guys would be stupid not to ask for help. Now if you will all excuse me, I'm signing off. I'm a consultant not an employee, and I think that the Nine coming in is a good reason for me to go out."

There was silence a moment, and then Velocity spoke up. "Okay, I'm on the console, however long that lasts. Shatterbird is hell on electronics. Someone give me a plan."

"Divide and conquer," Dauntless said immediately. "It's a big city, we'll get them separated and do this systematically. So far I'm not seeing any response to the Class S summons. We've got warnings going out on all frequencies and the sirens are going. We're going to try to keep the Nine separated from potential victims, barricaded safely away. If they're coming in by train, they'll be starting out in the north of the city, the trainyards. We are not working containment, we are working to corral them away from each other and play them off each other. These are fractious and temperamental individuals, we can break their teamwork and maintain our own."

"Do we have a current roster for the Nine?" Aegis asked.

"We do," Velocity said. "Jack Slash, Bonesaw, Siberian, Crawler, Shatterbird, Burnscar, Ravager, Hatchet Face, and Mannequin."

"Weak links?" Battery asked.

"For behavior and morale, Crawler and Ravager are listed as the weak links. For combat and threat, Burnscar and Ravager are listed as weak links."

"Sounds like we should focu-" Whatever else Battery was going to say was lost when the canopy of the car imploded, showering him with shards of glass. The car shut down, something in its control computer broken. The comms had a squeal of feedback but it died down in a few seconds. Danny pushed the canopy open and stood, staring around. The scene was the same as far as the eye could see, every bit of glass broken to razor-sharp slivers. Cars were undrivable, skyscrapers looked like ruined tombs. People fled through the streets, clutching at bleeding wounds. Danny turned and ran for the Protectorate tower, glass still falling in tinkling waves from its curved facade.

"Dauntless, permission to assume coordination duty as in previous Class S incursion," he said when the comms recovered.

"For what good it does you. There's no console, and we're on our own. The Protectorate is not sending reinforcements, there's a chance that the Ash Beast is nearing some major cities and they need our forces ready to deal with that. I think popular opinion is that the Nine are a team of villains, like any other, and not a real Class S."

"Fuck. Okay, Armsmaster where are you?"

"Workshop. Kid Win's with me."

"Perfect," Danny said. "I need a replacement console. Something portable and operable by mice."

"It'll be ready sooner than you expect, I've got a small batch of nano-assemblers for electronics work, and Kid Win's got some multi-purpose software that can do what you need."

"Thanks. Velocity, time to get you out on your feet again. Vehicles are inoperable and speed is of the essence. Take a set of ear-comms and get to the Shearsea shelter, get a comm-link to Dinah Alcott. Then run some more to Trainwreck, Circus, Uber, Leet, Parian and Panacea. Dauntless, I need a recon of that hijacked train, and I'm going to ask you to run a comm-link to the asylum so I can talk to Oni Lee. Assault and Battery, you guys are the first line of harassers, you get north and be ready to slow down the Nine as they leave the train. All other personnel converge on the tower so can coordinate from there, we need to be ready to move with the changes."

"Roger," Dauntless said. "Okay, I've got the extra comms, heading north for recon." Danny looked up in time to see a golden streak flash through the air headed north, stretching left from the Tower as far as he could see, and then fading. He jogged the last block, and stepped carefully up the stairs to the front door lest he slip on glass. The lobby was a ruin, the windows broken across the floor, mixed with blood, the wind blowing humid through the room. But the Wards were standing there, staring at him. Clockblocker seemed apprehensive. Aegis seemed overly confident. Flechette was staring at him with unmasked animosity. Benthic had her armor locked, standing in the position she posed for photographs in.

"Okay," he said, tugging off his helmet. "First things first, I've got to issue a battlefield promotion. Aegis, you're a Protectorate hero as far as I'm concerned, not a Ward. You'll be paired up with Miss Militia until I say otherwise. Clockblocker, that makes you the leader of the Wards. Unfortunately, you're not going to be featured this time like you were against Leviathan, without Skipjack and Dispatch I'd be risking your life asking you to get within arm's reach of these monsters. If I can get Parian on board, we'll talk about recreating the last seconds of Leviathan and hope that the Siberian isn't nuclear too. Flechette?"

"Fuck you."

"I deserve that and worse. I'll keep you alive to cuss me out later. Now, you're one of my five plans against the Siberian, and one of my best ones, so this is kind of the lynchpin of the strategy. So I need to know the exact and precise limitations and capabilities of your power."

"Five plans for Siberian?" Browbeat scoffed. "Most people only have one, and it's 'run away'."

"Nano-disassemblers, Flechette, Hatchet Face, Crawler, Clockblocker," Danny recited. "And if those all fail, then run away."

"I need you to explain the order you listed those in," Clockblocker said, hands on his hips. It was a common pose for Aegis. Clockblocker probably thought of it as a leader's pose. So he was trying to think like a leader, including understanding the whole plan and also making sure that everyone's safety was considered. He probably considered it a problem that he was rated fifth, would think of it as giving his safety more consideration than his teammate Flechette.

"In order: the nano-saws can take apart any physical matter we've tested them on, and they can be set in place and remotely activated, so they're the first line of defense for Siberian, the no-risk high-probability answer. Next is Flechette, a ranged attacker that can hit anything she can see and can kill anything she can hit. It's a natural choice, especially if we team her up with Vista to buy her plenty of space to make a getaway. Hatchet Face is capable of canceling any power, and he's fairly easy to manipulate. Low risk, high probability, but more time consuming and more involved than getting Flechette to bolt Siberian. If Hatchet Face fails, I instigate the Crawler to attack her, given enough time he can kill anything, but the problem could well be that in doing so he gets even tougher than Siberian, and we're not nearly ready for that. Failing those, Clockblocker is the next choice, sneaking him in somehow so he can touch her and set her up for a finishing attack, probably defaulting back to Flechette for that. Plans for sneaking Clockblocker in close include -"

"Okay, I get it," Clockblocker interrupted. "It's fine. But Siberian is just the obvious threat, not the real threat. Jack Slash has always been the Nine member to watch out for. He's kept himself alive since the beginning, and nobody else has."

"Every member of the Protectorate and Wards is armored heavily enough to deflect any of his knife attacks," Danny said. "Honest, I consider him as a non-combatant, a coordinator like me, but not a viable threat in the conventional sense."

"I had to do a report on that guy," Gallant said. "Everyone underestimates him, and they die because of it. I really, really think you should rethink your opinion on him."

Danny paused, looking at the sincere young man. "Okay, a researched opinion is worth more than my offhand opinion. We'll upgrade him to a wildcard, and work to observe him and specify what it is about him that makes him so much more than he seems. In the meantime stay clear of him and try to get rid of his accomplices so we can concentrate on him."

"Thanks," Gallant said, nodding.

"Dauntless to Druid," the earpiece said. The other hero's voice was pitched to carry over high wind, Dauntless was probably high up to keep a safe distance. "The train's already come in, they just plowed it full-speed into the railyard, there's wreckage everywhere. I can't see any of the Nine, even with the extruded view and infrared scope."

"Throw some lightning bolts into the wreckage and see if they're hiding in there," Danny said. "Shake the bushes."

There was a pause, and then the man came back on. "Nope, no reaction. Suggestions?"

"They've gone to ground, and need to be rooted out by the ground forces. Hit the asylum, recruiting Oni Lee in is more important than doing flyovers and hoping to get lucky."

"Druid, this is Assault. We're approaching the Trainyard, where do you want us posted up?"

"Um, take position near 20th street and keep an eye out, you're the leading edge right now."

"Whoops, gotta backtrack, overshot 20th. We'll be in touch."

"Druid, this is Velocity. Pull your leading edge back to the southeast, Jack's not heading straight south from the Trainyards. He's left a message carved some billboards out here."

"What's the message?"

"Give us the mouse."

Druid paused, trying to figure out what mouse they could be talking about. And then he clicked to it.

"Mouse Protector?" he said in his comms. "Is there something you want to tell us?"

"I didn't think they'd come after me," she said. "Honest, I thought they'd blow this off and I'd be scot-free! And then they showed up and everything's happened so fast and-"

"You should have told me that's why you were in town!"

"You kept secrets too, and I wound up taking part in your fights!"

"I punched a rapist in the head so hard he forgot his mother's face, but you were on the run from the Slaughterhouse Nine! This is not equivalent!"

"Lover's quarrel," Clockblocker quipped towards his team.

"Look, get over here and help me think of a plan. If they want you, we can bait a trap, that's something we didn't have before. Assault, Battery, drop back to tenth by Cornwall, and be really careful. We're maneuvering and navigating while the Nine are in the city. Take no chances, and I mean no chances, got it?"

"Got it boss," Assault said. Mouse Protector appeared at Danny's side, in full armor with sword and shield. She bit her lip as if mustering the nerve for a real apology, but Danny just gave her a nod while he checked the next incoming message.

"Gambler online," Dinah Alcott said. "I'm in a shelter, with a point two percent chance I'll be in personal danger until I leave."

"Good to have you, Gambler," Danny chuckled. "Thanks, Velocity."

"No sweat. I've got a view of some fires to the north, that's probably Burnscar up by Calvallo and Victoria, give or take a block."

"Armsmaster here. I've got your console, it'll be ready in two minutes. Get up here, it'll be waiting for you."

"Elevator's out, gotta take the stairs," Danny replied, heading for the stairwell. "Gambler, what are the odds that the Wards can take Burnscar out without casualties if we sweep them up along the Boardwalk and then west through the Docks?" He jogged up the steps, and was glad that his knees felt better than they had since he was a teenager. He owed Panacea many more thanks. Mouse Protector trotted along behind him, dogging his steps like a bodyguard.

"Um, twenty-two percent point eight seven three and change."

"Never more than one decimal point. Okay, what are those odds if they bear west to downtown then north to Burnscar's location?"

"Eight point nine percent."

"I didn't expect to get better than ten," Danny admitted as he rounded the landing for the observation deck. "Okay, Wards, roll out. West to Victoria then north. Vista, get them there fast. Browbeat, find something you can use as a shield, and something you can use as a projectile. Benthic, your priority is observation and situational awareness, watch their backs. Clockblocker, think defensively. Flechette, think offensively. Gallant, you're our utility player, if you get a shot at her try to use your empath-blasts to calm her down, shake her out of this burn-happy rage. Support each other, and be alert. All of your armor should be fully fireproof, so she's a low threat to you but a high threat to the city, and the real danger is that she may receive backup. Got it?"

"Got it," Clockblocker said. "We're moved out. Streets are clear, Vista's power is at full strength, we're making ten blocks for every one."

"Perfect. Anyone else have a report?"

"Dauntless here, navigating bureaucracy. Should be just a few minutes more."

"Thanks. Assault? Battery?"

"Battery here, Druid. Still no sign of them. I've got throw cameras deployed up and down the block, with motion sensors, and we're not seeing anything."

"They may have slipped the line. Leave the cameras in place and drop back five blocks."

"Roger."

"Velocity here, handing off comms to Uber and Leet."

"Thanks. Uber, Leet, you hear me?"

"We hear you. We're just not sure about being hooked in on a Class-S defense, it's not really our idiom, you know?"

"You're too modest. Uber, do you have access to a sniper rifle with a scope? You may be our best shot at taking out Hatchet Face or Shatterbird, and if we can get you a clear fire lane you might be able to cut their movements off."

"Um, I don't have one on me, but I know a place I can break in."

"Break into it. We're on Class-S protocols and you're a defender, all normal rules are suspended. Leet, what kind of gear do you have ready access to?"

"A really cool server for playing MMO PVP that I thank Genova was in a soundproofed room, a bunch of mind-control lights that are broken now, an awesome arm-mounted grappling hook launcher, an infinite supply of business cards in my pocket, a stone pickaxe that can get through most walls in a few seconds and can probably be used about fifty times or so. And, a huge stack of failures, like the shrinking armor that leaves the wearer regular size, or all these ray guns that are going to explode if anyone pulls the trigger. That's what I've got on hand."

"So, a lot of booby traps," Wharf Rat said. Mouse Protector snickered. He suppressed an in appropriate grin himself at her. "I can't think of any of the Nine we'd be able to trick into shrinking armor, so leave that off. Stand by with the ray guns, the grapnel, and the pickaxe, and see if you can cobble something together that would help us, maybe by neutralizing one of the Nine."

Armsmaster cut in. "Maybe something that can detect and counter a broadcast resonant frequency, I haven't started on anything like that yet, and it'd be able to take Shatterbird off the board."

"Hmm, I'll work on a design. Can't predict the deadline on that right now, I ll let you know when I know."

"Uber here, got the gun."

"Great. Post up on the top of the Protectorate Tower, it'll give you a straight shot right down Lord Street and you'll be able to pick off anyone crossing it."

"On my way."

"Carefully, if you please, with expert stealth."

"Oh, yeah, right."

"Assault here, we've got eyes on Crawler. He's headed your way, not quickly, and not subtly."

"Don't engage," Wharf Rat said, pausing on the stairs. He turned towards Mouse Protector, pulling something out of an inside pocket of the Druid's cloak. "Here, take this, drop it outside in Crawler's path. Be careful, come back to me immediately after, okay?"

"What is it?" the woman asked, turning the small device over in her hands.

"It's the most benign thing that Bakuda ever built," he said. "And if I'm lucky, I can take out two of the Nine with it. Now get."

Mouse Protector took the device and then started back down the stairs, much faster than Danny was able to climb them. She vaulted straight from landing to landing, descending to the ground level in just seconds. "Showoff," he said into his comm link. "Okay, Assault, Battery, keep relaying his location to Mouse Protector and myself, but stay out of danger.

"Clockblocker to Druid, Burnscar is out of the fight. Currently frozen, tying her up with lots of bent metal and putting out the fires so she can't teleport, and containment foam on top of that."

"Clear," Danny said. He realized belatedly that it was probably unreasonable for him to assume that these teenagers would kill someone without direct orders, and now he felt stupid asking them to kill someone they had already captured. He made a note to clarify his orders going forward. "Okay, Wards stand by at that location until she unfreezes, we need to confirm that she's thoroughly captured and safe. If she's safe, bring her to the tower for interrogation. If she cannot be safely contained, your highest priority is to not let her escape. Lethal measures are pre-authorized."

There was a pause. "Understood," Clockblocker said. Danny could hear disappointment from his daughter's silence.

He pushed open the door to Armsmaster's lab, and stepped inside. "Wh-... you've made changes," he said, somewhat overwhelmed.

"We have indeed," Colin said, from the cockpit of his armor. It was entirely different from before, taller and bulkier. It moved through the workspace with an eerie elegance, its mass shifting from moment to moment. As each leg stretched forward it was long and slender, with thin struts that connected it to the other leg. And as it touched down those struts snapped shut, telescoping as they pulled plates and pillars and levers from the other leg towards it. Whichever leg was bearing weight was strong, whichever leg was not was light and fast. Nothing wasted or idle, every part of the armor was in use to its full potential at all times. The hips and thighs of the armor bristled with small jointed arms with rotating toolsets on them that whirred and wove around the piece he was working on, a mass of tentacles emerged from the chest right under his viewport and turned the component he was working on, supporting it and rotating it so the various tools could get to work. The shoulders and main arms of the suit fluttered with vanes like a beetle's wings that opened rhythmically, and inside the glass dome that he was working in, Armsmaster's face was lit up with lines of light and specks that were projected from the internal holography as it displayed coded information in extremely dense formats that only he truly understood. The two main arms reconfigured constantly, joints appearing and disappearing behind sliding panels as they moved to always the perfect length and angle and presenting a vast array of tools that seemed to turn themselves inside out to slide away when they were done. "Your console's on the counter by the door," Armsmaster said. The room was full of raw materials, shelves full of different gauges of wiring, sheets of metal, simple machine tools to craft housings and other simple devices while the suit was making more complex components.

"What are you working on?"

"Multipurpose nano-saw weapons," Colin said without looking up. Inside his dome his hands were sketching diagrams in the air, and the onboard computers were interpreting them in real-time to take their instructions for the creation process, dozens of limbs all working in concert using his predictive software to find the optimal way to follow his instructions. "Yo, Kid, you're up."

Inside the dome, Colin rotated hard to the left, swinging and turning at the same time as Kid Win appeared from the right, rotating into place. They shared a suit of armor, swapping out active control of the suit as needed, the other sitting in the design space to work on abstracts. Kid Win spared Danny a nod as he began manipulating the builder armor. "It won't look like much at this iteration," Kid Win said. "Just a spike with a button. But they should be good for melee attack, defensive parrying, a thrown weapon, and a remote-deployable attack kind of like a mine." He paused, looked up again. "I heard once that you like mines. Anyway, if this test model works out the way we hope, we should be able to crank them out every few minutes, and we'll have real weapons for this fight."

Danny nodded, and grabbed the console to head downstairs. He did not do it as fast as Mouse Protector. And a squad of rats streamed into the stairwell ahead of him, bearing a tablet computer that they'd carried out of his bedroom. He scooped it up and led the way down, circling around.

"Trainwreck online," said a new voice. It was somehow gruff but also nasal. "Circus is here too, but I think she's a listener not a talker."

"Understood. Circus, if you need to signal confirmation, just press the signal button on the bottom of the comm link. Trainwreck, what's your status?"

"The city's stuffed full of broken cars, so I slammed something together. It's fast and it's tough and it's strong, but it's going to degrade fast and the components are going to burn out if I don't replace them, and I'll start losing speed, then structural integrity."

"Got it. Well while it lasts get you and Circus here to the tower, we're going to equip and direct from here."

"Dauntless here, Oni Lee is fitted with a commlink. Took longer than I expected."

"Understood, I'll take that from here, can I get you to support the Wards at their location? I'm a bit paranoid about them hitting backup."

"Will do," the Protectorate leader said. Danny walked down the stairs, past the ground level, and down to the basements.

"Oni Lee, this is Wharf Rat," he said into that channel. There was silence from the other side. "Oni Lee, I want you to get someplace safe, where there is nobody nearby that you could hurt and nothing important that you might damage, someplace like the roof. Find a place like that and when you do that, I want you to use your new teleportation power, the one you learned after you killed Butcher. And use that teleportation power to get to the roof opposite the Protectorate Tower. All hands, let me know when Oni Lee arrives at that spot."

"Clockblocker here, Burnscar is safely contained. Shall we begin transporting her?"

"Carefully, and cautiously, move her to the tower to be interrogated. Gallant, stand ready to calm her." He climbed through the broken grate and into the storm drains, navigating his way through the tunnels. He wanted to get rid of the armor, it didn't feel right. Like it was a lie he was tired of telling. But for the meantime, he needed any protection he could get against knives, fire, acid, axes, claws, broken glass, and poisons. He remembered early in his career when the idea was to hang out a block away from the action, dressed inconspicuously, but against the Nine there was no place that was safe and no anonymity. But being forced to stay in the armor just made him come to terms with how badly he wanted to be rid of it, and the cloak, and the technology. After two lefts and a right and some careful maneuvering around a broken section of pipe, he found the first-generation tunnel buggy. Oak and maple, sheet plastic and staples. No engine, no headlights, no radio. He slid the tablet and the console replacement into the cargo section with a couple dozen of his smarter rats, and then he climbed in through the hatch and sealed it up. He put his feet on the pedals, and rode out.

First order of business was Crawler. The Druid appeared in the street, standing calmly with his hands folded behind his back as the murderous behemoth approached. It turned its ponderous head towards him, staring with big black compound eyes. "You've no scent," the monster said, its various mouthparts moving intricately as it spoke in its garbled voice.

"No, because I'm not here," the Druid said. "I just wanted to ask you a question."

"What question?" the Crawler demanded.

"Are you getting what you want?"

The thing laughed. "All I want is the best fight I can get, so I can get stronger than anyone ever."

"And are you getting that?" the hologram asked, calmly.

"I'm.. I can do it any time I want," the monster replied. It sounded unsure of itself in a strange way, confused.

"It sounds like you could take what you want, and you have chosen not to," Druid said. "So is that really what you want?"

"Of course it is! And I _can_ take it whenever I want! I can fight them right now!" it bellowed, spitting flecks of acid from its razorlike mandibles. The street hissed from the spittle, bursts of acrid green smoke rising from the contact. The Crawler heaved its bulk around, facing west, and charged. At high speeds its various legs moved in segments like a centipede, tentacles lashing as it swept down the street. The Druid's projection flickered and faded, and a small mouse ran out of hiding to grab the miniature projector and carried it down to the storm drains, where it was picked up by its master and tucked somewhere safe. The tunnel-buggy rolled out, keeping pace with the Crawler's charge.

"Armsmaster to Druid: Mannequin is down and out. He came at me through the air vents. This guy's even better at infiltrating a space than you are. Anyway, he didn't seem to expect that every aspect of this armor also has a combat utility."

"Watch out for tricks, Mannequin's a bad one about outmaneuvering enemies and working deceptively."

"He thought he was attacking your backline, rooting out your tinker support. He thought that killing me _was_ the surprise move. And I'm looking over his armor, it's everything you'd expect. If this is a ruse, he's put as much work into this ruse as he has into his own personal transformation. This guy is a testament to the idea of efficiency taken too far, the way he's packed this armor tight. He's even excised parts of his brain so there'll be room for other components. Sheesh. I'll study this, but I'm treating him as much as a cautionary tale as anything else. Maybe I can get some usable, sane ideas I can integrate into the armor systems or base defenses. It's a shame, he was probably the best tinker of his generation before the Simurgh killed his family. He was going to be the guy that saved the human race, giving us shelters that could survive any attack."

"Dauntless here, I've got a positive visual ID on Hatchet Face. Looks like he's trying to break into one of the population shelters."

"Can you shoot to disable?"

"I could take out his arms," Dauntless replied.

"Do that. Leet, got a job for you and your grapnel gun, we need to haul Hatchet Face to where Siberian is."

"Send someone by for it, I'm busy neutralizing Shatterbird's powers."

"Boss, it's Velocity. I just found Parian and Panacea, handing them commlinks now. Do you want me to get the grappling hook and run it over to Dauntless?"

"Don't bother," Trainwreck said. "I can get there in a few minutes and just pick him up and carry him away. He can't do anything to my powers until it's time for me to repair my armor."

"Thanks. Triumph, Miss Militia, Aegis, the Wards will be arriving with Burnscar. You three handle the interrogations, keep Gallant close. Carefully and with no room for mistakes."

"Okay," Dauntless said. "I just disarmed Hatchet Face. Twice. The wounds are cauterized, he won't bleed out."

"Sure," Triumph said. "Hey, did you bump Aegis up to the big kid's table just so you wouldn't be the new guy anymore?"

"Never crossed my mind," Danny lied smoothly. "Gambler, what are the odds that Crawler kills Siberian?"

"Um, thirty-one-point-nine percent, actually."

"We might not need Hatchet Face, but if nothing else we can keep him around to take out Crawler after the fact," Danny said.

"It's weird, you hear about Siberian being fully invulnerable, and unstoppable," Battery said. "Like a force of nature, worse than an Endbringer all by herself. And to think that Crawler has a credible chance to kill her. He's tough, very dangerous even for a villain, but you never hear about him in the sort of context of Siberian and Endbringers, he's just not at that level. Have we just always underestimated his ability to adapt to someone else's powers?"

"Parian here, do you have instructions for me and Panacea?" cut in a new voice.

"Yes, whip up a great big horse, I need you two mobile and well-defended. Have some bodyguards ready. Your telekinetic constructs are one of the only weapons we've got that Bonesaw doesn't have a countermeasure for. Get to the Protectorate tower and stand by."

"Triumph to Dru, Oni Lee just appeared in a burst of flames and explosions."

"Thanks. Oni Lee, stand by while Mouse Protector marks you."

"Seriously?!"

"Just do it, you're going to be supplying him with weapons while we fight here. Armsmaster, do we have a spare suit of armor that would fit him?"

"Some experiments that I was working here, could be remodeled to fit him if I had his measurements."

"Got it. Mouse Protector, mark him and then lead him to the Armsmaster's workshop. Oni Lee, follow where she leads you, got it?"

"m," was the smallest sound that the comm link could carry.

"Oni Lee, are you recovering faster this time? That'd be great, we could really use you at full strength for this fight," Danny said. "You make me proud."

"Uber to Wharf Rat, I've got a visual on Shatterbird."

"Take the shot, no hesitation."

"Locked in. Leading. Firing." The comm link carried a muffled version of the gunshot. "She's hit, but I missed center body mass. Looks like it's got her in the shoulder."

"Fire again."

"Locking, leading, firing," Uber said, and the shot rang out. "The leg this time, she's dropping out of my sight. She's flying west, juking to spoil my shot."

"Stay alert. You said west?"

"Yeah."

"Crawler's heading west," Danny mused. "We haven't seen Jack, Bonesaw or Siberian at all, the three core members, and we've been concentrated on the east near the tower. It looks like Mannequin and Burnscar and Hatchet Face were deployed to slow us down and keep us looking in the wrong places, probably Crawler too. Tell me someone has started interrogating Burnscar."

"We're on it," Aegis said, murmuring into his earpiece as if to keep someone from overhearing. "But we're going slow to keep from getting her worked up."

"Good thinking. Jack probably uses her rage to keep her in line with the rest of the Nine. Keep her calm, give her some water to drink, remind her that she doesn't owe them anything."

"Got it."

"Okay, everyone not re-equipping or interrogating at the Tower, reposition west. Current rendezvous point is the City Hall, center of downtown. That should put you close enough to the action to get involved while maintaining a discreet distance. If the fight is further west than I think, we'll reposition rendezvous. Parian, give Uber a ride, Trainwreck take Circus. Gambler, stay put. Leet, how are we with that invention?"

"It's coming together faster than you'd expect, the principle is simple enough. Probably inside the next couple hours, depending on the tests."

"Stay on it then. Wards, get to City Hall. Be safe and be careful when you travel. Assault, Battery, Velocity, same rendezvous. Holy crap, I just realized: where is New Wave? Shouldn't they be here?"

Panacea spoke up. "We all got hit pretty hard by Shatterbird. We, uh, were shopping for lighting fixtures in a big-box home improvement store. There was glass everywhere. I got them mostly patched up, but every one of them wanted to stay in the shelters and sit this out."

"Oh, damn, I didn't even realize. I just sent Velocity to fetch you, I didn't think that I'd be pulling you away from wounded family."

"It's not really the wounds, it's... there's been a lot of stuff this last few years. Personal stuff with the family. It's been bad, times have been tough. And they put on a brave front, flying around on patrols and occasionally grabbing a car thief, but they've been lacking confidence lately. No wins, and so many personal tragedies that it feels like I'm the only one who's been miraculously unaffected. And the work I've been doing with you, well it helps a lot. I want to help, but they just need some time to recuperate."

"Thanks for telling me," he said, and then switched channels. "Okay, all units stand by, situation is developing over here." He slowed the tunnel-buggy, and listened in through his rats.

Crawler loomed out from between two buildings, over four figures that were walking down the street, looking for something. Jack and Bonesaw walked hand in hand, with the Siberian right behind, carrying Ravager under her arm. The deformed lunatic had its claws bound behind its back, and blood drooled from its face. "It's time," Crawler gurgled. "It's been too long, I've waited too long. You and me, mute."

Siberian turned and looked at Jack, who sighed. "Crawler, why right now? Just give us a few minutes and you can have them both."

Druid popped up out of the grass at the side. "You're just a few minutes away and you had Crawler posted all the way across the city? That's dirty pool, Jack."

Jack Slash turned towards the hologram. "Ah, the Druid. The man with the rats and the lies. Have you been talking to my Crawler?"

"I didn't lie to him, Jack, I just asked him to answer a question for himself. Not for me or for you, just for himself. I asked him if he was getting what he wanted. And it turned out that he wasn't, Jack. You were keeping him from getting what he wants."

"No more!" Crawler bellowed. "Jack, don't get in my way!"

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jack Slash said, stepping aside graciously. "Bonesaw and I will be on our way. Whichever one of you lives, come join us for the last part of our field trip." He took hold of Ravager's bindings and led him away. Druid collapsed into light, and the rat whisked the hologram projector away.

Crawler led with a flurry of claws, but they hit Siberian like he was swinging balloons against a brick wall. He bared his fangs and sprayed her down with acid, but it slid off of her naked body without a mark, pooling at her feet and etching the ground. She stepped aside onto solid ground, and stared at him as he slashed again, putting several tons of his body weight behind the blow, only to snap his talons and break his forelimb at the elbow. He snarled as the wounds healed back, and he bellowed "Fight me! Fight me like you mean it!"

She stepped forward without flinching and swatted at him, cracking his shoulder with one swing and caving in his ribs with another. The broken bones popped back into place and he flailed at her with his massive tree-trunk of a tail, but she stood still and let it break against her. She reached up and seized his jaw in one hand and his ear in the other, then jerked so his neck snapped. "More!" he bellowed, healing immediately. "Why are you holding back!"

She punched, and her arm sunk in up to the elbow, then swept it out to create a nasty gaping wound that healed in heartbeats. She kicked at his ankle and broke the leg, forcing him to stumble, but nothing stuck. "You're not showing me your power," Crawler roared. "I'll kill the old man if you won't stop me!" he declared, and turned away from her, sniffing deeply and then galloping to the north. Siberian leaped high, arcing over him and landing in front of him, her feet tapping lightly against the ground as she set down. She swung a punch at his head that sheared his jawbone off and sent it spinning to the side, crashing through a storefront. He laughed and gurgled and lunged forward, past her. She leaped again, putting herself in front of him, and she grabbed a car and slammed him sideways across the shoulders, throwing him across the street hard enough to demolish the building. The roof of the massage parlor caved in over him, but he shrugged it off with no effort. His skin was starting to flicker in patches, and he bellowed out his laughter as he ran around her and forced her to corral him again. She stopped him in place with an open-handed slap to his chest, then she braced her other hand underneath him and then hurled upwards, flinging the massive creature hundreds of feet into the air. He dwindled to a tiny black wriggling figure, and then began coming back down.

The Siberian stared, watching him fall, then leaped, leading with one hand spread open with her long fingernails leading. She punched in one side of him and out the other like a bullet, the force of her entrance cracking his heavily-reinforced spine, her exit forceful enough to yank out several vital-looking organs joined together with stringy-looking gray meat. He hit the ground with a massive crunching sound, and rolled to his feet, already mending. His skin seemed to jump, pulsing outwards. And the outward pulses were monochrome, the markings of his body rewritten in bold black and white designs like her stripes. "More!" he screamed, jubilant and victorious. "Give me all of it!" He ran north, with Siberian following, and rats following her, and Danny following them.

She landed on his back and started ripping, her hands plunging in and shredding whatever she could grab, yanking bones or organs or just gobbets of flesh and throwing them to the side like a dog digging a hole through his body. But on each of the pulses, her hands would not penetrate, his flesh temporarily as invulnerable as her own. And then the pulse ended and she slipped through. But the more she did, the faster the pulses came, the longer they lasted.

"He's absorbing her power," Danny mused. "But her power isn't in her flesh, it's forming a field around his body, encasing him in a Siberian shell. And she did not take him seriously until he threatened the old man. Hmm," Danny thought, and cast his rats about. The streets were empty, there was almost no interference, no confusion. There were only a handful of human scents in the area. Himself, Jack, Bonesaw barely qualified, Ravager, and one figure up ahead. Slowly, quietly, he pedaled ahead, covering the sound of his travel with the sound of the two monsters killing each other in the street.

The man wasn't that old, mid to late fifties probably. But he was very poorly taken care of, a sickly bum with a long hobo beard and ragged clothes. The man sat in the driver's seat of a beat-up minivan, his hands on the wheel as he stared down the way towards the two titans that brawled for his life. Rats chewed through the rubber seals on the doors in seconds and bit through the fiberglass to let themselves in, squeezing in. The man's hands tapped on the steering wheel. On one hand, a tattoo of a white bird, the mark of someone who had been caught in a Simurgh attack, a warning of unpredictable insanity. On the other hand, the Cauldron symbol. The man had powers, was Simurgh-touched, and the Siberian thought his life was of paramount importance, and the Siberian's power was a projected power. The parts clicked together for him. The van was half-full of rats before they attacked. The first attack went to his carotid artery, teeth sinking deep. The man screamed, and the Siberian disappeared, teleporting to the van, ripping the driver's side door away and hauling him out. The rats clung to him in a carpet, biting everywhere, wounding as deeply as they could. Blood streamed down to the concrete as the Siberian worked frantically to shake the rats off of him, sweep them away with her hands. His flesh tore as her strength ripped the rodents away without disengaging their jaws. With multiple arteries opened, it was only taking him seconds to bleed out.

The Siberian flickered in an eerie mirror of the Crawler, and then she was gone.

"Holy fuck," Danny Hebert breathed aloud. "I think I just killed the Siberian."

"What?!" Armsmaster blurted out. "How?!"

The rest of the channels burst out in hubbub. He had left the all-call signal engaged when he stood by to watch Crawler and Siberian fight. He cut off their chatter and stepped in to address them again. "Okay, Jack and Bonesaw, Ravager and Crawler are all over here. I'm out by Captain's Hill, near the radio station."

"You mean out by the substation?" Gambler asked.

"Oh," Danny said. "Oh, shit, they're here for the Travelers. That's what Jack and Bonesaw are looking for."

"More power to 'em," Trainwreck said. "Those guys are kind of jerks. If Jack and his moppet think that it's worth it to go after them, then maybe the Travelers will at least wound them a bit to make our jobs easier."

"Anger much?" Browbeat asked.

"Let me tally real quick," Velocity said. "Siberian's dead, Mannequin's dead. Burnscar is safely in custody, Hatchet Face is disabled and contained, and Shatterbird is badly wounded."

"And Ravager is apparently being held as a captive by Jack and Bonesaw," Danny added. "And Crawler may be completely off script."

"Do we... do we have them on the run?!" Velocity said, stunned into disbelief.

"Enough to move the rendezvous point up," Danny said. "All units at City Hall, move up to the Medhall headquarters. Uber, move up to City Hall. Armsmaster, how's Oni Lee?"

"Almost done fitting him. This armor includes dozens of force-field projectors embedded in it, overlapping. They've got a recharge capacitor so they can pop back up as soon as they're knocked down. It's optimized against big hits, works to cushion the blows to something manageable. It's intended for heroes with enhanced durability like Assault or Triumph, but it should work for Butcher too."

"His name's not Butcher," Danny reminded the inventor. "He's going to need a dozen of Bakuda's grenades, something with real hitting power, and a pair of those nano-saw spikes."

"That part's already taken care of," Colin said. "Right now I'm just making alterations so he doesn't rattle around inside this thing. An inch of leeway can make it impossible to use a limb, power armor isn't easy regardless of what you've made people think, Druid."

"Got it, thanks. Triumph, anything on the Burnscar interrogation?"

"Nothing that's making any sense. Apparently they've had an interest in Brockton Bay for weeks, Bonesaw made them go visit and kill a bunch of people for answers, including some guy named Blasto whose power is so much lamer than I expected. And then Ravager told them to go kill Mouse Protector, and when Mouse ran here to hide out Bonesaw flipped out in a happy way and insisted on coming here as fast possible. But Jack hates being told what to do, so he's going to make Ravager suffer for telling him what to do, but he's still after Mouse Protector. I think it's a pride thing. Anyway, she's calmed down, she's drinking some juice, and has shared some information about how to nullify her powers and how to contact her old psychiatrist. Gallant has been working wonders over here."

"Good work there. Bonesaw and Jack are headed for the Travelers.. dang, I bet this is about those murders. Remember, months ago when they first went to the sewers, the substation was shut down because the workers were becoming deformed and psychotic, killing anyone they could and looking like horrible monsters. Whatever happened to those people, Bonesaw wants it for herself."

Danny pedaled forward, took two lefts, and started infiltrating rats into the storm drains and sewers, spreading them out ahead of him to see what there was to see. And he saw Crawler excavating, digging with long claws and immense strength to rip away the earth. He was growling something at Jack Slash, but Danny couldn't make out the exchange. They were standing near the ladder that led downward, but it wasn't clear why they weren't taking the ladder. "I've got eyes on Jack, Crawler, Ravager, and Bonesaw and Shatterbird. Looks like Bonesaw stitched her up before she could bleed out. She smells funny, I think she's on some stimulants to make up for blood loss. All units converge one block east of the substation, and do it carefully and stealthily. I want to pin them between us and the Travelers if we can, by surprise. Armsmaster and Kid Win, stay where you are and work those weapons. Let me know when Oni Lee is ready to ride. Triumph, Miss Militia, Gallant, Aegis, stay with Burnscar. Everyone else move to, um, the base of the water tower just east of Captain's Hill."

"All units?"

"Even you Leet. Whatever you've got left, you can finish it in the field. Dauntless, he's going to need a lift over here."

"Got it Druid," the team leader said. He sounded tense for the first time, now that this was drawing close.

"Finishing touches on Oni Lee's armor, get Mouse Protector to lead him outside before he does that explosive teleport."

"Mouse, did you get that?"

"I got it, fetching him now."

He waited, watching, as the assembled teams pulled up into position. There were four Protectorate heroes back at the tower, and two Wards. One little girl in a shelter, helping out however she could. Out in the field, four local Protectorate heroes plus one from out of town, four local Wards plus one from out of town, one member of New Wave, five former villains, and one rogue. And himself, plus whatever assistance they could get from the Travelers. Against five members of the Slaughterhouse Nine. He watched his console board, the indicators for his team approaching the position, even as he sent out updates to the Protectorate headquarters and a stream of requests for Class-S backup. There was no response, and it looked like the parahumans of Brockton Bay were on their own. Leet and Dauntless were first, then the Wards, then Parian and Panacea, then Trainwreck and Circus with what was left of Hatchet Face towed along and then set at a safe distance away. Then Oni Lee and Mouse Protector, then Assault and Battery with Velocity hanging back to arrive with this friends. Uber hotwired a car and arrived soon after, driving slow to avoid all the broken glass and stalled cars.

And about then, he finally got some rats into position to see into the sublayer of the substation. It was a massive round chamber with tunnels leading in and out, with a crude camp set up at one side with tents set up and layered bedrolls that looked unwashed. There were suitcases of clothes lying open willy-nilly, and all of it was dingy and dusty as living in the sewers had taken its toll. Four Travelers uniforms were stacked to one side. And there were five teenagers in there, living rough in these terrible conditions. The tall thin one was probably Trickster, judging by the smell of his cigarettes. The tall muscular one was Ballistic, the only one that matched the profile. There was another boy, a long-haired pretty-boy who was laying out a row of sliced bread to make sandwiches a dozen at a time, with cellophane clingwrap ready to bundle them up. A small girl was slumped in a wheelchair, looking utterly exhausted, and so was Sundancer as she held her orb of sunfire steady on one tunnel of the substation. A rank stench of burning meat emanated continuously from the ball of superheated flame, and a continuous roaring warbled up and down, seeming to form angry words. The Travelers had clearly fallen very, very far. They all appeared exhausted and worn thin, their nerves shot and their morale even lower than the sewers themselves. Trickster had a nervous tic in his right hand, and Ballistic was rocking himself in place.

And then the wall caved in, spilling dirt and tumbled stones and pouring sunlight into this place. Crawler swelled through the gap, and the others came in behind the monster. Somehow seeing sunlight in there was even more wrong than seeing the Travelers there. Sundancer looked over her shoulder, and saw the intruders. She wavered, and the sunfire wavered. "Oh, no, you're Jack Slash," she quavered. "Please, please don't..."

"I _am_ Jack Slash!" he pronounced with a wide grin, tugging his lapels, then he dropped one hand onto Bonesaw's shoulder. "And my little darling here is most, most interested in what's on the other side of that," he said, gesturing at the sun-bright fireball.

"You can't," Trickster said, hauling himself upright, his eyes pleading. "You can't, we can't..."

"Boring," Bonesaw said, and gestured to Shatterbird. The woman nodded, and stained glass chips lifted from her costume and rotated around her, swirling like a glittering tornado. They streamed out and shot across the room to Sundancer, turning sideways at the last second to hit her with the broad sides instead of the cutting edges, throwing her against the wall. The fireball collapsed, and revealed a wall of charred meat on the other side. Bonesaw stared at it as it regenerated, her face lit up like she was seeing a world of ice cream and Disneyland. "Amazing..." she said in an awed hush.

The meat turned pink as the burnt edges healed to raw wounds, then swelled forward in a massive surge. Powerful clawed feet slammed to the ground, gouging the concrete, and gaping maws and mouths yawned open all around its body, tentacles roiling and coiling near the left shoulder. A woman's torso emerged from the top surface, with long brown hair and eyes of utter madness. The truncated torso would be about twelve feet tall just by itself, but it was utterly dwarfed by the sheer enormity of its lower body. It howled something wordless and well past meaning, reaching for the parahumans gathered in front of it. Jack strolled around to gaze on it from different angles, his boots crushing Oliver's sandwiches without a thought. "My god, Crawler, it's even bigger than you. Heals faster, too."

"A good fight," Crawler growled, its voice ecstatic, its flesh still pulsing with the Siberian's power.

"Don't," Genesis pleaded. "You have to stay back, you can't let her touch you, you can't let her feed... she was biting her own legs off and eating them, regenerating the leg and growing bigger. She was so hungry, and she was trapped, and we couldn't bring her food fast enough, she started cannibalizing herself. She's growing more backwards than forwards, we don't even know how big she is really, trapped in that tunnel all this time. We burned her front end off, or I form something she can't eat and jam her up. It keeps her from eating and growing and getting hungrier. But you have to stay back, you _have_ to!" Her voice cracked on the last few words, stress and strain and fear taking over.

"Well, Bonesaw?" Jack turned to her. "This was your field trip, you wanted to see this. What's your call?"

"When confronted by unknown circumstances," the small blonde girl said confidently, "experiment."

"I thought so," Jack grinned, then hauled Ravager to his feet and thrust him forward. The tentacles lashed out quick as snakes, tangling around him and pulling him into the flesh. It didn't bother with the mouth, just hauled him right up to the leathery hide that was suddenly gelatinous and membranous. Ravager yelled as he was sucked in, and then he went quiet.

"Oh shit," Trickster said, and then he reversed himself with Shatterbird and made a run for it, sprinting up the sloped exit towards the sunlight. Jack slipped a small craft knife from his sleeve and made a short sideways motion, and a line of blood appeared across the backs of Trickster's thighs and he stumbled, fell. The other four Travelers and their housemate just stared as the thing in the wall continued lurching and reaching, then the massive gristly mouth on the left opened and vomited out a stream of foul-smelling ichor and four humanoid figures. They were naked and disfigured, some of them resembling Ravager in a vague way. One had a face made almost entirely of a mouth filled with sharp teeth and long talons for fingernails, one was hunched with a tumorous hump on its upper back, and the air shimmered as it breathed, a shimmer that was growing at an exponential rate. One was covered in thick gnarled skin like keloid scars, the last one was almost human looking except that one arm and one leg were withered and infantile.

The grinning clawed one moved to the side of the thing in the wall and started scratching at the concrete, drawing a thin puff of powder as it gouged the surface. A second later, more powder streamed down, the gouges deepening, growing, joining, even while the thing scratched more and more, creating a cascade effect. It was trying to burrow into the wall to free its creator. Rats and bugs were pulling themselves out of the ichor and vomit, mad-eyed things that didn't respond to his control, grown large and ugly and sick-looking. Sundancer held her hands out, conjuring another ball of fire.

"Don't," Jack Slash said towards her. It was curt and brooked no argument, but she tried anyway.

"Please, we have to, or it will-"

"Don't tell me," Bonesaw said. "I want them to show me!"

The hazy air from the hunched figure washed out to Sundancer, and her ball of fire flickered out. "Oh," she said, blinking rapidly. "I don't.. I'm gonna pass out." And she dropped sideways to the ground.

"It denatures the air," Bonesaw said, nodding. "Like the way that Ravager's attacks would create spreading wounds, that thing's every breath shuts off the oxygen that its breath touches, a spreading cloud of, hmm, looks like carbon monoxide. Or just non-bonding oxygen. It's gonna kill us all in a minute, Jack, get rid of it."

"We could just send it out into the world and see what it does there," Jack suggested.

"Asphyxiation's _boring_ Jack!" she said, stamping her feet.

"Fine," he said, and flicked his knife to open the thing's throat. It gasped as it died, and the haze dissipated.

"It clones them," the small tinker said, staring. "Instantly. And it makes them all grody. And psycho, even if they're not already psycho. And it changes their powers some, too. Oh, Jack, this is the best present you could ever give me!" she squealed, jumping up and down and spinning in a circle before she lunged to give him a giant hug. "Thank you Jack!"

"Anything for you, darling," he said. "Shame it's down in this sewer though."

"Controlled environment," Bonesaw waved his objection away. "Not laboratory conditions, but who really wants laboratory conditions? This lets me compare data properly. But Ravager is gonna get boring. Start throwing these losers in," she said, gesturing around at the Travelers.

Danny hit the control console to reposition his colleagues, a cautious slow advance to close the gap without the Nine or the Travelers or the thing in the wall hearing them. "Leet, Uber, over here," he said, indicating a particular spot by having rats lead the way like Lassie while he spoke into their headsets. "Uber, we're going to need an expert structural engineer, can you take care of that?"

"Can do."

"Good deal. Leet, hook the hostage with your grapnel and be ready, then get about ten meters down from here. Trainwreck, you stand with them to control the hostage if anything goes wrong. Now, everyone in Armsmaster-made armor, muster up at the ramp, be ready to breach." Danny took a deep breath to calm himself, centered himself back away from the conflict. It didn't help much, since it just pulled him back to the awareness that he was trapped inside a suit of restrictive armor with a faceplate only an inch from his eyes, inside of a coffin-sized vehicle on his belly, inside of a concrete tunnel under twenty tons of dirt. He had never been claustrophobic, but this was exactly the sort of situation that turned people into claustrophobes. He un-centered and concentrated on what was going on around.

"We're not going without a fight," Trickster promised, crouching low. He pulled out a wad of tissues from his pocket and they switched places with a long sharp knife. Sundancer pulled herself to a standing position and got ready to call the sunfire. Ballistic looked up with hollow eyes, his hands hovering near some debris on the ground. Genesis huddled backwards, unable to call her power on such short notice. The fifth member, the long-haired pretty boy, shrank back against the walls and tried to be inconspicuous.

"Kkrraauussssee," the thing in the wall groaned through gritted teeth. Its hair hung in front of its face, its naked arms were long and wiry, and its eyes were still entirely mad, but it could speak.

"Shit, Noelle," he said, looking up at her with pleading eyes. "We tried, you know. You know? We really did try. Tried everything. We just-"

"Ttrruusssstteedd yyoouuuu," the giant mad thing hissed.

"And I think that young Krause here knew that he couldn't be trusted," Jack Slash said. "A man who calls himself Trickster is a man who knows he shouldn't be given trust, and for him to lead a team like this, well..." he trailed off, still grinning. "Come on, Krause, haven't you let enough people down? Why don't you do the right thing?"

Krause stared up at the giant creature, Noelle, as a bundle of tentacles unfolded from the thing's shoulder and stretched towards him. He seemed resigned and defeated, accepting the grip of the tendrils as they wrapped around him. The suckers of it tore at his clothing as they lifted him up off his feet and reeled him in, and blood ran from his skin.

"Krause, don't!" Ballistic yelled, and with a sweep of his hand he launched a barrage of silverware like it was bullets straight at the bundle of tentacles. The metal implements tumbled in the air, and they didn't chop the tentacles through so much as pulp them with sheer focused force. Krause was dropped to the floor and Noelle roared from five mouths as the tentacles regrew, lashing towards Ballistic.

"No, damn!" Trickster shouted, and then he and Ballistic switched places, Krause taking another assault from the sucker-arms as they lashed him and began dragging him back. "Get out of here!" he yelled at his comrades.

"Don't," Crawler said, moving with surprising swiftness to cut off their retreat, pinning the other Travelers in the chamber, too close to the thing in the wall. One reaching hand was the last part of Trickster to get pulled into the squishy membranous flesh of the Noelle creature, and then he was but a fading shadow in the translucent flesh, pulled deeper into its mass. Sundancer's lip quivered as she watched her monstrous friend envelop and consume their mutual friend. Ballistic's fatalistic expression matched the one that Trickster had just held.

"Time is of the essence guys," Danny reminded Uber and Leet and Trainwreck. He watched through the rats as they worked, but it was two steps forward one step back.

"Hey, wise guy, this is not nearly the ideal tool for this job," Leet protested. "As you'd know if you bothered playing any kind of-"

"Please don't stop working," Danny murmured in Leet's ear, and the tinker grumbled as he went back to work.

The Ravager covered in thick ugly scar tissue raked its ragged fingernails down Genesis's leg, and she stared in horrified fascination as the wound festered and bubbled with infection, the skin peeling bloodlessly back. She did not protest or wriggle as the creature pulled her up into its arms and carried her towards Noelle. Shatterbird made an imperious gesture, and the long-haired pretty boy walked forward with his hands up, staring up at his friend as he walked into her reach, ready to be consumed. Bonesaw was crouched over the dead Ravager with the tumorous hunchback, expertly cutting open the skull and chest cavity as the Travelers were fed to Noelle.

"Fascinating," she breathed, her face alight. "The brain structure is almost entirely intact, only tiny variations. The organ structures are nearly as complete. Far better examples than the skin and gross anatomy of the limbs. So, either she creates clones that are much more perfect in the brain and vital organs than they are in the aesthetics, or the internal cloning process is self-selecting to the most viable clones!"

"Can't let this go any further," Danny muttered. It was hard to find the right timing, he wanted to wait another minute but if Noelle swallowed Sundancer and Ballistic another minute would be too late. "Breach team, make an entrance."

Dauntless was the first one in, flying above and lashing out with his spear that fired a beam of coherent golden lightning down at Jack and Bonesaw, but he didn't account for Crawler's uncanny speed as the giant monster interposed itself, taking the blast on its wide flanks. Assault and Battery and Velocity were in next, holding lethal-looking tinker weapons that they swept around to cover the room, picking their targets. The Wards appeared behind them, Vista contorting the space so quickly that they seemed to teleport. She compressed the physical dimension of length and width, so that one step carried them twenty feet each, then released the compression so the world was back to normal. Clockblocker was at her side, and Browbeat and Benthic and Flechette. Most of them held tinker guns except Flechette who still had her heavy crossbow. Oni Lee appeared in an explosion, holding two white plastic batons that blurred the air around them, dressed in black armor with a curious gold webbing spread across every surface. Dauntless let up the lightning blast and erected his force field. "Let them go, Jack. We're taking you in."

"I still have two hostages here," Jack said. "Let's handle this like hostage negotiations. You throw down your weapons, and you can pick which of these two I'll release."

Dauntless paused, listening to his earpiece. "Sundancer is our pick, send her over," he said, and nodded to his team. A dozen tinker weapons clattered to the floor near the remaining members of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

"Now you know who the favorite is," Jack said to Ballistic, and he nodded to the Ravager that held Sundancer's shoulders. The creature shuddered at the idea of letting prey go, but it complied and released her. "Now then," Jack said, "I'll let the other one go if the Druid will show himself."

A hologram flickered to life in front of Battery. "You'd give up your last hostage just like that?" the Druid asked. Danny didn't bother wondering how Jack Slash knew he was close by. He was more concerned with wondering why he had bothered to get this close. Scouting with his rats was a big reason, certainly. And the lack of Protectorate resources like he'd had during the Leviathan battle was a factor. But some of it, he was certain, was due to Mouse Protector and her insistence on the hands-on methods, and Glenn's constant harping on the need to 'maintain a presence'.

"Who's giving up hostages?" Jack grinned. "I'm trading them. Everyone you've sent in here is my hostage."

Noelle vomited forth a stream of foul sickly fluids, and bodies tumbled out with them. One was almost the spitting image of Trickster, save for his wrinkled and withered skin, another was a clone of the same man but with his hands and feet ending in tumorous stumps like cauliflowers. One was a frail young woman whose legs were twisted together and almost braided, dragging behind her like a serpent's tail as she hand-walked out into the room. Things began appearing in the air, small amorphous shapes with fast-beating wings and long beaks like a hatchet's blade, hovering above the snake-tailed girl. The last shape was doughy and unfinished, with the same squishy translucent skin as Noelle's lower body. It stood but made no other moves until a giant mouth on the monster opened and a tongue coiled out to drag the protoplasmic figure back in.

"You give up Ballistic, they're free to walk out of here, and I join you down in there," Danny said, asserting the terms.

"Yes, that sounds fine," Jack said. "But everyone else stays put, your heroes and my villains."

A minute later, the Druid pushed open a manhole cover and slid it to the side, climbing easily up the ladder and pausing only slightly to slide the cover back into place. The armored figure with the swirling cloak strode across the street and the grass with a long, easy stride, barely sparing a sideways glance towards where Uber, Leet, and Trainwreck continued their work. Panacea and Parian sat on the other side of the ramp, looking distinctly nervous. No words were exchanged and the figure strode down the ramp, stopping immediately at the bottom. The armor settled into place, locking the joints and fixing the same eerie stillness as before the fight with the Undersiders. The speakers hidden on the sides of the mask let Danny speak out.

"Okay, Jack, I'm here."

Jack Slash nodded, and Crawler shoved Ballistic towards the exit. The two remaining Travelers left at a run, clearly glad to be out in open air again. The leader of the Nine turned back towards the Druid. "So, at least I abide by my deals, Druid. So, what do we do now? We're clearly at an impasse."

"I don't see how," Danny replied. "You've got three of your people plus the monsters, and I've got eleven heroes here with armor that makes them impervious to anything you can throw at them. The armor is proof against knives, syringes, poison, diseases, shards of glass, Ravager's fingernails, and whatever it is that your fake Genesis is doing over there. Only Crawler is any threat at all, and Oni Lee alone would completely destroy him. You know that Noelle here is insane, and whatever influence you have over her and her creations is not going to last long. They're grateful to you for feeding them, but you've got about ten minutes before that gratitude is all used up."

"It's not about the people, it's about the position," Jack Slash said. "I'm in a winning position. I've got Noelle here, and now that she's awake and fed she is going to destroy this city. At this point it's a question of whether I kill you and she kills your city, or whether you kill me and then she kills you and your city. That's the impasse, sorry if that was unclear before." His grin was wide and bright above the jagged points of his goatee.

"And, what, you think Crawler is going to help you with this?" Danny scoffed. "He came all this way because he thought that he could fight whatever made the monsters. But now he's here and he sees that Noelle is just big and squishy, and she doesn't even fight she just feeds. You've broken too many promises to him, and still you're counting on him to save all your lives."

Crawler growled and shifted position, its massive moon-eyed head swinging towards Jack Slash.

"Says the man who's counting on the continued loyalty of a team he has pushed around for months," Jack sneered back. "You've hid secrets from them, you've stolen their recognition away from them, and you've even betrayed them, but you still think of them as loyal pawns when you're counting your minions against mine."

The Protectorate heroes turned to see his reaction, Flechette even bringing her crossbow around to point more at him than at the Nine.

"I have flaws," Danny admitted. "Some grievous ones that I will have to answer for soon. But nothing I've ever done compares to what you did to Bonesaw."

The little girl raised her head up, startled, and looked back and forth between the two men as if confused.

"You're not worried about Bonesaw, you're worried about Noelle," Jack countered, snarling. "But she knows you're going to kill her and all of her creations."

"I thought Bonesaw was important, but if you'd rather change the subject, we'll play it your way. Hey Noelle," the Druid called out, raising his voice without turning away from Jack Slash. "Has Jack here done anything at all about getting you free, or does he like you trapped right where you are." The tone wasn't really that of a question.

The mad-eyed monster swung to face Jack, a snarl playing across its lips.

"And do any members of the Protectorate think they'll be better off than Noelle if they continue working with you?" Jack chuckled. "I'm sure they look at this massive powerhouse stuffed into this tiny tunnel full of rats, and they know exactly what it feels like. Always doing what they're told, feeling a never-ending pressure from all sides, shown off when it suits you, and stuffed down whenever they're inconvenient."

The armored heroes murmured amongst themselves, glancing back and forth from their huddle towards the Druid who had turned their whole world upside down and who never stopped telling them how to do their jobs. Flechette glanced from Noelle to Druid, and her stance was grimly determined.

"And what, you expect them to join your little mischief army because killing people is, what, fun?" Danny shot back. "Do you understand that your entire justification for your idiotic destruction sounds like it was ripped from the pages of a fifteen-year-old malcontent's secret diary? Did you read the first two chapters of some Nietzsche and decide you had the world figured out?"

Jack tapped a knife against the corner of his jaw. "Hmm. You're good at this. Soon you could be as good as I am, honestly. We could keep going for a while, raising the stakes, putting the pressure on, see whose loyalties wind up on either side. I could probably pull a few of yours away. The crossbow girl for sure, maybe the three speedsters. You might get Crawler. But you know what? I don't think we'll do that, because ..." he paused, staring at the Druid. Danny stared back, and the two men figured it out at the same time.

" _You're stalling for time, too_ ," they chorused.

 _Author's note: I want to start now by thanking everyone who has commented and offered reviews. It has thrilled me to read all these kind words... with a special shoutout to who inadvertently predicted certain elements from this chapter. And also I offer my thanks to those who have been recommending this story to others and promoting it; thank you. I intend to keep posting chapters on a one-on one-off schedule until the whole thing is up, likely just a little over three weeks at this rate. As of this time my first draft is closing in on the story climax and I have finally gotten a look at what the ending is going to be._


	16. Chapter 16

Jack reached out and snatched Bonesaw by the hand and fled down one of the side tunnels that radiated from the tunnel. The Druid lunged into motion, producing a handful of razor-sharp knives and hurling them backhanded. Bonesaw took one to the back of each of her knees, and she stumbled even as Jack turned at the last moment and swung his own knife, cutting the other two out of the air. He snatched the girl up while the Protectorate exploded into motion. "Oni Lee, get Crawler!" Danny's voice called out.

And then a flood of naked, deformed bodies burst out of the side passages. Grotesque lumps covered their heads and bodies, misshapen limbs limped strongly along. The first wave bore the features of Ravager and Trickster amid the disfigurements and deformities, and absolute chaos broke out. Dozens of teleporters swapped places with the heroes, separating them and trying to bear them down by sheer strength of numbers. Ravagers clawed at armor, and smoke rose from the growing gouges as the advanced armor was etched by a burning corruption. One Trickster took a flying leap towards Noelle, and traded places with Shatterbird at the last second, pitching her headfirst into the quicksand-flesh of the trapped behemoth.

Oni Lee teleported rapidly, ringing Crawler in a noose of explosions that chewed away the hardened flesh and knocked its myriad legs out from under it. He struck between the monochrome pulses, only teleporting when the massive monster was vulnerable. He concentrated on the creature's midpoint, behind the second set of shoulders, and alternated explosions with slashes from his nano-saw batons. Flesh boiled away to thick greasy smoke, leaving cuts three inches wide and a few feet deep. He pressed harder, slipped himself inside the Siberian-shell and began cutting deep, cutting through. Crawler bellowed as it was carved in half, its body twitching as it began regrowing the lost mass, new legs sprouting from ballooning flesh. But Oni kept going, not slowing, his batons now cutting into the wound and working deep, now intent on quartering the Crawler he had halved. One of Crawler's newly-grown tentacles had a nano-saw sheath on it, and it lashed back against Oni Lee to cut him as he had cut it. But the force-field armor repelled the nanites, leaving him safe. The creature's regrowth was slowed and stifled, working to overcome the Butcher's power to create wounds that spread instead of healing. The Crawler almost wasn't strong enough to regenerate at all, and it could feel itself on the losing end of this battle. A maniacal assassin was inside its body, suppressing its regeneration power, and carving it apart from the inside using weapons that destroyed everything they touched. So the Crawler had to get smart: it began dragging its failing body towards the mad thing in the wall.

Dauntless flew up to blast lightning at the monstrous misshapen malcontents, but his own team was mixed in and positions were constantly shifting, the teleporters were screwing with everything. He found himself back on the ground again, and he quickly took flight again only to be grounded again. Battery shared a glance with Assault, and they nodded. She charged up her powers, and threw a massive haymaker straight at the Trickster in front of her. He swapped himself for Assault, and she struck him with all her power while he was ready to absorb and redirect it. He turned into a dervish, a buzzsaw of punches and kicks that whirled through twenty monsters before he slowed down. Vista found her power all but shut off, the presence of living people limited her ability and this room was nearly packed wall to wall. But her armor was still power armor, and she started punching at naked bodies, using a pair of metal fists with glowing red-hot brass knuckles built in. Clockblocker was restricting the enemy's movements, freezing every cancerous creature he got his hands on. He made his way towards the tunnels, looking to cut off the tide of reinforcements. Flechette was in a bad way, her power was world-class for assassinating hard targets like Leviathan, but not so great against a horde of naked maniacs. She didn't have an unlimited supply of bolts, and she couldn't just fire them into a mass of bodies unless she could be positive that none of the heroes were mixed in with them. Velocity had his back to a corner and was using a nano-saw baton to dismember any monster that came at him. A Trickster teleported him out of the corner and he quickly wove his way back, cutting down mutants between him and the nearest wall. Browbeat thrashed his way through the crowd, Ravager claws raking against the force field he projected but not even penetrating to his super-alloy armor, this was the sort of fight he thrived in. Benthic sprayed a barrage of mini-containment-foam-grenades to bind up the mutants, and followed it up with shocking punches that transferred the voltage from her target to everything bound to him with foam.

The Druid vaulted over the wall of bound monsters and grabbed Benthic under her arms, leaping up and away with easy grace. The boots tapped once, twice, on the back of Crawler's dismembered hindquarters, and then skipped lightly across the heads, shoulders, humps, and reaching hands of a horde of Clockblocked mutants then dropping the girl next to Flechette. "Jack and Bonesaw went that way," Danny said through the speakers of the armor that Circus was wearing. "You two, go get him. I've still got you on the console, be safe."

"C'mon," Flechette said, grabbing the other girl's hand and running on. She was glad to get out of the room, not just because of the deformed monsters but also to put space between her and the meddling liar that called himself Druid.

Crawler dragged himself into Noelle's reach, and a massive clawed foot landed on his back, the claws scraping against his invulnerable shell for a second before it wavered and they sank into his toughened hide. Oni Lee finished cutting upwards, severing the right side of Crawler's body from the left, right from the side of the neck back to the second pair of legs that were still regrowing. He turned and started cutting again, carving away even more of the monster's mass with his power-infected weapons. A voice buzzed in his ear, the boss telling him to leave this target. Oni Lee nodded and teleported away, only a second before the Crawler was pulled into Noelle's gelatinous mass. Oni Lee began killing the pitifully disfigured creations that were trying to kill the boss's other soldiers, never slowing.

"Shit, falling back," Velocity said into his mike. He zipped through the crowd and up the ramp, shedding his armor as he went. The breastplate fell into two smoking halves as he dropped it, and every other score and scratch from a Ravager-clone burned through the armor on every other plate. "Damn," he panted. "I don't think I can go back down there."

"Understood," Danny said. "Get to Leet and Uber, help them."

A second later both Battery and Assault came up the same way, also stripping out of the armor that had kept them alive this far. "Don't wanna have this stuff on me when it finishes eating through," Assault said, cutting away the smoking parts of his undersuit before the damage could spread to his flesh.

"We've gotta hold this line," Battery said, staring down the ramp. "We can't let them out."

"They don't want out," Vista said, limping out. "Ow. Ow. They're defending Big Momma back there. And I think they've got the other tunnels overrun, they can move through the city underground and come up wherever they want. We're not holding any kind of line here."

Panacea helped the girl out of her armor and found the spreading wounds on her thigh. The flesh separated, and the wounded area dropped away like a shed petal, replaced by healthy new flesh from underneath. Clockblocker walked up the ramp in his undersuit, leaving the armor behind and frozen in time to cover the exit. Browbeat and Circus came up through the ladder, moving to rendezvous with the others. She shed the Druid armor without a word, despite it not being marked or damaged, stripping down to her harlequin garb.

"Done!" Leet called out from the side.

"And it's about damn time," Trainwreck said, stepping back.

"It's a damn pickaxe! It's not meant to tunnel through dirt! If I'd had the shovel, this would have been a five-second job!" the weedy little man protested, as they lowered Hatchet Face down the hole with the grapnel. A ten-meter hole with sloped sides, angled down to a rounded concrete surface. It had been meant to be a simple tunnel, but the pickaxe did nothing to keep dirt from collapsing into the hole, and they'd been forced to excavate huge volumes of dirt to get the tunnel this deep. Add to which that the pickaxe would only destroy matter in chunks one meter on a side, and it was a wonder it had gotten done at all. And as the writhing Hack Job dropped onto the concrete, there was a titanic roar from underground. Leet looked up at Uber, his eyes wide. "Shit. Shit that's loud."

Danny was wearing the brown undersuit from his Druid armor, squinting without his glasses. "Okay, we need to wait for Clockblocker's obstructions to become movable again, and then launch the second offensive. If we can kill Noelle, we can mop up her creations."

"Not actually that easy," Dauntless said. "There could be thousands of them down there. Thousands of homicidal parahumans, Druid. We are so far past being outnumbered here. Why isn't the PRT sending help?"

"Everyone's on standby for a possible hit by the Ash Beast on a metropolitan area," Danny said. "I think at this point everyone thinks of Brockton Bay as the city that cried wolf. Claiming two Class-S threats simultaneously just a couple months after an Endbringer attack, I think everyone would rather believe that we're exaggerating."

Ballistic looked better than he had before, rested and refreshed by Panacea's touch. He was still dressed in hand-me-downs that had been stored in a sewer. "Wharf Rat, we meet again," he said, reaching forward to shake the older man's hand. "Glad you came to help."

"Tell me what we're up against," the Wharf Rat said. "I've done pretty well with guesswork so far, but I'd like some real information."

"She used to be our team leader, but her powers were unstable," Ballistic said. "If anyone touches her, she creates an evil twin. If she absorbs them, she keeps creating more and more evil twins. She's always angry and always hungry these days. She can eat any kind of dead meat and she grows, anything alive gets absorbed and cloned. She can regenerate from anything, she's indestructible and unkillable. She's stronger than she looks, and she looks damned strong. That vomit is toxic, a crazy brew of germs, and it's also really high pressure. No matter how many clones or vomit she creates, she never loses a pound. She only ever gets bigger, anytime she eats. No limits that we've ever found. She got stuck in the tunnels when we were trying to find a way out of the city after Coil got nabbed, and before we could get her loose she started growing even more, just wedged in too tight. The bigger she got the more pissed off she was all the time, and she grabbed some sewer workers and sent out their evil clones. That was when we knew we had to hold her back. So Sundancer and Genesis would take shifts sealing the tunnel to keep us safe so she wouldn't try to grab us anymore. It just... it got way out of hand."

Wharf Rat nodded. "Okay, that actually makes sense. But you say she kept growing?"

"It's the sewage," Ballistic said. "She absorbed it and grew. It's not good for her though, not like raw meat. So she's been growing and getting sicker all this time."

"Shit," Wharf Rat said. "Growing, continuously. And the further she grows, the more surface area she has, the more she absorbs and grows. We have to stop her."

"How?" Sundancer demanded, still sounding terrified. "She's not a villain, she's not even an Endbringer, she's so much more than that!"

Wharf Rat looked over at the others. "So, Hatchet Face might not be able to suppress her powers..."

Gambler came over the comms. "Hey, let me to settle that issue for you. She's not an Endbringer, she's still a parahuman. And there's a ninety-one-ish percent chance that Hatchet Face can suppress her powers. That nine percent is probably just to rule out you doing something weird and stupid like feeding him to her."

"Thanks Gambler," Wharf Rat said. "Okay, we're going to- hang on," he said, as the earpiece began buzzing. The machine let off a whining hum that rose swiftly in pitch. Danny was staring straight at the others, trying to figure it out. Circus was the only one who got their earpiece out in time, before they self-destructed. Danny lay on the ground, clutching at the side of his head as the world spun around him. It took him a few dazed seconds to realize that his inner ear was damaged, and that was why he was so disoriented. That and the pain. Then Panacea got a hand on him and in a few seconds he was fine.

He rolled to a sitting position, and caught his breath. His throat was raw and he had not even been aware that he'd been screaming. "Oh fuck," he murmured, "we just lost comms. We've got no way to reach anyone. Oh shit Taylor."

"Your daughter," Dauntless said, his face still pale. "Okay, we'll split the team. You take a squad and go find her, I'll finish off Noelle here."

"Right," Wharf Rat said, nodding. "Panacea, Parian, Oni Lee, Trainwreck, Circus, Uber, Leet, you guys are with me."

Mouse Protector appeared from thin air right at his side. "Hey, guys, everything that can generate a resonant tone in the city just went kablooey. Speakers, crystals, and our comms. Is everything okay?"

"We got split up," Wharf Rat said. "Did you ever mark Benthic or Flechette?"

"Uh, no," she said, crestfallen. "Where can I help?"

"Bring a bunch of nano-weapons here for Dauntless's squad to use," he said. "We'll be back around to check on them but first, we're going in after Jack and Bonesaw."

Mouse Protector looked around at his squad. "No, um, no offense, Wharf Rat, but these guys are not who I'd take against the Slaughterhouse Nine. You've got a full Protectorate team and a Wards team and-"

"And Jack Slash took ten seconds to turn them against me," Danny pointed out. "They resent me, Mouse. They put a brave face on it, but I don't fit in with them and I never will. Normally that's not a big deal, but against Jack Slash it's crucial. I can't be going after him with a team that tolerates me to keep the PRT happy."

She paused, bit her lip, and nodded. "Okay. Good luck. Godspeed."

They stormed the main chamber all together. The first move was a sweep of rats that cut tendons and hamstrings to bring the mutants down a peg. Dauntless mowed down the first wave with one pass of his spear, cutting bodies in half from the left wall to the right. Oni Lee hit like a dozen bombs, teleporting through their ranks and knocking those sprawling that survived the first volley. The heroes broke right to kill the thing that had been Noelle, while her regeneration was still offline. The rogues broke left to hit the tunnel that Benthic and Flechette had followed Jack Slash and Bonesaw. Trainwreck was the first one in, then Circus, then Uber and Leet, then Wharf Rat, then Panacea and Parian. Oni Lee teleported up into the point position ahead of Trainwreck. The tinker in his giant powered armor flicked a switch, and headlights beamed from his shoulders, illuminating the way ahead of them. "Plastic lenses," he said. "The only kind that survived Shatterbird."

Rats were gathered and mustered to them as they walked. The tunnel divided into two smaller lines in just a block, real sewers were not meant for people to walk around in. The rats easily indicated which way to go, but it was a question of who was going to be able to make it. Uber just shrugged and squirmed into the tight opening, with the aplomb of a skilled contortionist. Leet followed, just plain small and skinny enough to make it. Circus came after, then Panacea and Parian, then Danny. Oni Lee was stripping out of his armor, and he came next. Trainwreck was the last, it took him a while to dismantle one gauntlet from his armor and attach the main power source to it so he could fit through the tunnel with at least some of his armor.

Uber reached the next fork, and rats easily indicated which way he was to go. As the rest of the group scooted along, Parian handed out strips of cloth to tie over their noses to block out the smell of feces and rot. And nobody tried to think too much about this mission. The path they took wound along a bit, working their way uphill as they worked against the gravity flow of the sewage. They paused briefly when a massive shudder ran through the ground, like a bomb going off or an earthquake. "Shit," Leet opined, and then they got back to finding the Wards.

And to the relief of all, the trail took them to an overflow tank in the storm drains, an open space with a mildly musty smell. They each took a quick dip through the accumulated water to wash away the sewage. And only fifty feet down a tunnel, they found Benthic sitting on top of Jack Slash's back. He was bound at his hands and feet with containment foam which was serving to hogtie him. Flechette leaned against a wall next to Bonesaw, who looked pouty and petulant, eyes downcast and her hands pressed together in front of her. "How did you do it?" Parian asked, amazed.

"I walked up to him and I punched him until he shut up," Benthic said, shrugging. "What, like it's hard?"

Flechette glared at the Wharf Rat. "I still don't like you. And I'm going back to New York when this is done. To hell with this city. Don't call me for any more Endbringer attacks if you're going to be involved." The walls around her were scarred by acid and etched by marks he couldn't recognize in this lighting. Clearly there had been a hell of a fight to take Bonesaw down, despite Benthic's off-handed comment. And her venom towards him was new too.

Wharf Rat looked over at Benthic, his eyebrow cocked curiously.

"It took a while for him to shut up," Benthic said. "The man has a gift for pushing buttons."

Circus was looking over Bonesaw while the little girl glared daggers. Panacea walked over to see as well, and paused. "What the- how? What-why?"

"The brat is pretty resourceful," Flechette said. "First she dislocated her thumbs to get out of the zip ties. Then she popped loose a shiv made of bone once we had her zip-tied more thoroughly. She can spit poison, she's got something under her fingernails I don't want a better look at, she even started to shed her skin to get away from me. So I had to use my darts to pin her hands together, and her knees, and her jaw, and pin her elbows to her ribcage. I can take those out once we've got her back at the Tower."

Panacea had her hand on Bonesaw's shoulder, her finger brushing the girl's neck for the smallest skin-to-skin contact. "Okay, this is... wow. I can do biokinesis, but I would never have thought of a lot of this stuff. Okay, whatever you guys do, don't let her vomit. Or pull her hair out. I can read all of this, and I can see how it's done, but I would never had imagined these myself. And I would never have dared to try a lot of this. Damn." She pulled her hand back, shaking her head.

Taylor cleared her throat. "Okay, if you help us to the surface, we can get these two back to the Tower."

Danny looked down at Jack Slash. "We're in Class-S protocols. We took Burnscar prisoner because she's known to be insane, known to be treatable, and had usable intelligence for us. We took Hatchet Face alive because we had a plan for him. But this is Jack Slash. If there's the remotest chance he could escape, we can't afford that chance. None of us can. If he gets sent to the Birdcage, god knows what would happen. If he gets to the Tower alive, someone might make a decision that ends with him being set free."

"That's cold blood," Taylor pointed out, her voice tense. "He's unarmed, restrained, and unconscious."

"Take Bonesaw back to the Tower, she may be a candidate for rehabilitation," Wharf Rat said, his voice hollow-sounding.

Oni Lee took a step forward, facing Jack, interposing himself between Danny and the leader of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Danny clapped the Asian man on the shoulder. "I appreciate the offer, but I can't ask you to do this for me," Danny said, kneeling down. He grabbed Jack Slash by the back of his jacket and hauled him half-upright, then dragged him to the overflow tank.

In the movies, it always takes five minutes or more to drown someone. Danny was genuinely surprised that Jack Slash was dead in about sixty seconds. Shockingly easy. Just to be certain, a rat clipped through the carotid artery, and the flow was sluggish and dark-colored. Without a beating heart, arteries flow like veins. Oni Lee helped him carry the body upstairs. Bonesaw started wailing. Everyone else was staring in the same direction.

"They didn't kill her," Parian pointed out.

"They botched it," Uber corrected.

"Shit that's huge," Trainwreck observed.

Having been forced to do all of her growing in tunnels had caused her to grow in a shape like the tunnels, so that when she finally ripped free of the tunnels and the ground, she looked like a massive fleshy earthworm with a human torso, head and arms perched on top of it. Noelle was reared up like a cobra, standing nearly a hundred feet in the air, visible from a great distance. And the serpentine body was studded with eyes, legs, mouths, exposed muscle, whorls of gnarled callus, clusters of tentacles, even a couple more Noelle torsos that hung off at odd angles and dangled downwards. One wide mouth near the ground opened wide and vomited forth a half-dozen bodies.

"That's where they all came from," Danny said. "She was swallowing people in front of us, but regurgitating clones in the other tunnels, where we couldn't see. That's how she was able to rush us with an army."

"If she's making new monsters with each of those mouths, and we've been gone for twenty minutes, how many of those clones can she have made?" Uber asked, stroking his chin.

"What's the name of that demon that looks like a woman with a snake body?" Danny asked without looking at anyone in particular.

"Lamia," Parian answered.

"Lamia," Danny repeated, absently.

"Shit, that's a giant tornado out on the beach," Benthic said, pointing.

"Guess a Shatterbird clone happened that can control silica in that form," Panacea said.

"And I've still got that feeling that the worst is still ahead of us," Leet complained.

"Hundreds of Shatterbirds, hundreds of Crawlers, but sure," Trainwreck said. "Sure, the worst part is still to come."

"You're an asshole," Uber said, scowling at Trainwreck.

"It's been said," the other man said, as he grappled the Crawler-clone. He worked to hold it still without injuring it so that it would adapt further. It was scabrous and foul, but with each regeneration it seemed to be growing more symmetrical, more refined, as if its regeneration was compensating for the imperfect process of Noelle's cloning. Tentacles emerged from its elbows and knees, and a row of bladed spines ran down its back.

"I miss Clockblocker for this," Parian said, as she shot out spools of thread to bind the clone's limbs, immobilizing it further.

"Though truthfully, only for this," Panacea said, as she stepped forward and touched the clone on the shoulder. It froze and went stiff as she made contact. "He's kind of a pest."

"They're starting to come faster now as we approach the epicenter," Danny reminded her. "Don't just disconnect that one, Amy."

She paused, grimaced, and looked down at her arm. There was a long slice taken out of it from her should to halfway down her wrist, curving where a Shatterbird had nearly speared her with a sliver of glass. The wound was stuffed full of bacteria now, sealing the wound and speeding the healing process. She couldn't use her powers on herself, but she could use her powers very very close to herself, and that was almost enough. "It's gonna be really gross, Wharf Rat."

"And I'm sorry about that," Danny said, grimacing with her. "But you're really vulnerable and we have to make sure we're ready for what we're going to find."

"So are Uber and Leet!" she pointed out.

"Uber and Leet are protected, and aren't on the front line," Danny pointed out. "None of us can take down the Crawlers but you and Oni Lee, and you're much faster than he is. If we can protect you, we'll make better time." But he still spared a look backwards at the massive conglomeration contraption that Trainwreck had kit-bashed in ten minutes. It was made of a dozen cars and it showed, it was huge and it rolled over lesser cars like a tank. Trainwreck was half driving it, and half wearing it, his new suit was indistinguishable from the vehicle. But it was heavily armored, and very stable so that it could be used as a mobile laboratory without the driving process disrupting too much. And Leet was in there, working on the last steps of his resonant-frequency-dampener. Uber was sitting in the shielded gunnery pit with his sniper rifle, looking to put down some more Shatterbirds. It was easier than the original, because they didn't have all the upgrades from Bonesaw making them inhumanly tough, and they were sharing a city's worth of glass so some of them were working with less material than they'd like.

Panacea looked at the Crawler she held paralyzed. "But it's just... god, I can't even imagine doing it. It's just ... _gross_. And besides, you're not wearing armor anymore."

"And I'm not going anywhere near the bad guys if I don't have to," he pointed out.

She sighed, and turned her gaze back to the Crawler clone. It began to shift in her hands, growing wider but flatter, a long wound appearing on the near side and then sealing shut. Its bones grew visible through the wound and rearranged themselves, while thousands of smaller and more complex processes went on out of sight. And then Panacea opened the flesh up, and pushed her foot inside, sliding it down through the monster's leg. Then the other foot, then she ducked her head to tuck her upper body inside. The seam sealed closed behind her, and Panacea was wearing the reconstructed mutant as a suit of armor. It began reconfiguring, growing thick chitinous plates on its chest and shoulders and head, heavy claws at the hands. "How does it look?" the creature said, her inflection coming through a guttural monstrous larynx.

"Terrifying," Wharf Rat said. "You tracking all right in there?"

"Bioluminescent screen in here, hooked directly to the optic nerves," she said. "A lot like the display in your own armor."

He nodded, but he was partially distracted when his rats stumbled across a knot of sleeping bodies in a nearby apartment. A small room with dozens of twisted, gnarled figures laying on a bed, chair, desk, the floor, sprawled all about. Most of them had severely damaged legs or none at all, and all of them had the rhythmic breathing and slowed heartrates of deep sleep. The figures that could be identified as a gender were female, and he sent his rats in to sever arteries and bleed them out. For every one of them that died here, somewhere in the city a projection vanished.

Parian circled overhead, riding a pair of vast fabric wings. She turned to the mouse that rode on her collar. "I don't know if you can see this, but it looks like there's a higher concentration to the south. If you steer north, you can avoid some major concentrations of her spawn." The mouse looked up at her and nodded, and she went back to scouting. And below, one of her massive creations was walking with the team, a long-limbed thing like a four-legged spider that stilted along. It was made mostly of heavy tarp and denim, and had already survived onslaughts from a half-dozen Shatterbirds and Genesis creations. She had to have line of sight to guide it, but from the sky she had a lot of line of sight. And with a small mouse perched on its belly, he could see whatever it could see, within his range.

"Hang on, got another group of the tricky ones," Wharf Rat said as they came in range. "And they're... shit, they're trying to break into a shelter. Everyone, on the double!" He stepped back as Trainwreck revved his engines, and Danny grabbed a handle and swung up onto a footrest as they sped along. The mouse on the dashboard directed the driver which way to go, and the rest of the team mounted up. It was less safe to travel this way, but speed was of the essence. Anything could be a trap or an ambush, but to protect a shelter they'd have to take that chance. Each of the sunken bunkers could hold hundreds or tens of thousands of citizens, depending.

Circus crouched on the roof, not far from Uber's sniper's nest. Panacea jogged alongside them, taking long bounding steps that carried her twenty feet at a time. She fell behind on the straightaways, but the Trainwreck contraption needed to slow down through the intersections so it could cross the broken pavement that Leviathan had left behind at the water mains, and she could vault those without pausing. Oni Lee teleported from rooftop to rooftop, back in his gold and black armor, keeping a high overwatch position. Wharf Rat had found himself surprised at how fast this squad had gelled together, considering that two of them were infamous assassins who never spoke, one was a pacifistic hero, one was a skittish fashion designer with no allegiances, one was a grouchy inventor who only worked on junk, one was a small girl who lived with her parents, two were the least respected villains in the city, and then there was himself. It shouldn't work at all, but it had a strange sort of chemistry.

They reached the entrance to the shelter. It was largely inconspicuous, just a heavy concrete door set into a heavy concrete wall. And one console on the exterior that controlled the locks and the contact to the interior. There were a couple dozen people clustered around the panel, arguing to be let in. The ones in the back were carrying weapons, and a Ravager clone was lurking nearby. The normal-looking ones had a wide range of appearances, and all of them were dressed in whatever they could steal on the way. Fortunately, they all smelled odd to the nose of a rodent, and he didn't need to be worried that they were killing any innocents. He was pretty sure that somehow those men and women were clones of that long-haired pretty-boy who had been with the Travelers down in the sewer.

Oni Lee ripped through them in seconds, while the rest of the squad watched for other attackers. The assassin appeared next to the Ravager in an explosion that blasted it and wounded it badly, then he took two fast steps to bring him close to the crowd. He threw the two nano-saw weapons and they cut straight through the crowd while he teleported to the opposite side, catching his own weapons easily and leaving the clones dead on the ground. But the noise brought out a dozen Crawlers that leaped off a high roof to charge them. The monsters had apparently been fighting each other to force their regeneration to adapt them to ever-fiercer forms. There were variations, but they all had a distinctive Crawler look as the power tried to fit them to a particular mold. Some of them even retained some of the original's power, one of the Crawlers was strobing monochrome occasionally as it showed a borrowed piece of Siberian's power.

Oni Lee led the charge, teleporting into their midst to knock them off-balance with his explosion. They were wounded and disoriented, slowed down. He went after the strobing clone and started carving, cutting the clone in half and then quarters in very little time. Panacea grabbed one with a massive claw and lifted it upright, then her armor shifted as if the arm was shortening by several inches, bringing the captive Crawler in close enough for her to touch it with her own hand. The captured clone went limp and stopped regenerating, and dropped to the ground with a thud. Trainwreck's contraption swung out an arm the size of a tree trunk and crushed one monster so extensively that it took several seconds to heal, and by then the tires were rolling over it. Uber distracted one with a supersonic bullet to the face, and Parian's tarp-spider used that opportunity to wrap it up tightly in one long, flexible leg, gripping it tightly to immobilize. Circus whacked one with a giant mallet that appeared and disappeared at her whim, knocking it to an easy position for the tarp-spider to bind up tightly. Most of the team could only temporarily stop the creatures, but they could buy enough time for Oni Lee to cut them apart mercilessly, or for Panacea to disable their powers and their lifesigns at the same time.

They crossed paths with another knot of Tricksters working with a pack of Ravagers who tried to ambush them by teleporting Wharf Rat and Uber into an upper-story apartment full of monstrous clones. Uber switched his expertise to Krav Maga and held them off long enough for Oni Lee to teleport to the rescue and mess up that strategy. Circus and Parian arrived seconds later, helping him to pin down the mutants and finish them off. After that a Genesis creation attacked the workshop/tank, a flying creature with a seventy-foot wingspan, a needle-sharp beak, and a deathwish. The impact from terminal velocity was enough to nearly take the contraption off of its wheels altogether, and it took several minutes to repair the damage. From then on they did a better job watching for aerial threats.

"Ah, shit, something new is happening," Wharf Rat said through the window towards Trainwreck. He gestured the others a little closer and described what the rats could see. "More mutants, these are bigger than most of the rest. The skin is kinda grayish on most of them. They've got weapons, crowbars and baseball bats and axes. They look strong. And they're standing in a line across the road, ten feet apart from each other, from one side to the other. We're gonna have to go through them."

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" Leet said to Uber.

"Hatchet Face," the big man replied. "Looks like that's what went wrong after we left, the Protectorate lost control of Hatchet Face and he got swallowed, so now his power is working for her not against her. So now there's a bunch of homicidal clones of a super-strong, super-tough power suppressor."

"So, this would take most groups offline entirely," Trainwreck said. "The Protectorate would quake in their boots, and New Wave would not go within fifty feet of this."

"I can confirm that," Panacea said. "Fortunately, Hatchet Face is vulnerable to Circus's knives and fire at a range, Uber's sniper rifle, Trainwreck's bash-o-matic, Parian's big stompy spider, the rats, and even my big nasty Crawler-esque power armor, up to a point."

"And even Oni Lee could just throw rocks at them super-hard and super-accurate until they died," Parian pointed out. "So, we steamroll them."

"And what I'm pondering is that it looks a little too pat," Wharf Rat said. "It's almost like bait. It's an easy fight that would be crazy-hard for almost anyone but us. They could just not realize what we can do, it could be an accident on their part that created an easily exploitable weakness. But if I was them, the only way I'd lay out a situation like this was if I was trying to arrange a distraction and get my enemies overconfident."

Parian plucked at her sleeve. "So, what's the trap? There's several office buildings right around here with completely empty windows and no glass on the ground around them, plenty of ammo for Shatterbird. There could be a bunch of them hidden to get the drop on us. Or a dozen Tricksters to teleport us each in different directions so we all get ambushed separately and wiped out. Or gods know what Genesis could throw at us."

"We could lose a lot of time second-guessing," Wharf Rat said, "or we could just go for it. I'd really like to have Gambler in my ear for this. You learn to appreciate her as soon as she's not around. Okay, we're gonna go for it. Oni Lee, there's a building right here, on my signal I want you to teleport into this corner of it and start cutting everything structural you can see, tip it over right on top of them. The rest of us are going to run right down the street and try to respond to any counterattacks."

A minute later the skyscraper tipped over and flattened all the Hatchet Face clones, and the workshop/tank rolled right over the rubble and out into the clear.

"That was actually anticlimactic," Panacea said. She jogged alongside the workshop/tank easily enough. The past few fights had bulked up her armor, she now stood about eight feet tall and was covered in massive muscles and thick armor plates.

"It's nice to have thing turn out not to be worse than they look from time to time," Wharf Rat replied, still hanging on the

"If you're in the mood for good news, I've got it finished," Leet said, poking his head out the window. "The frequency counterdevice. It should take all the Shatterbirds offline everywhere in the city."

"Fire it up, the sooner all of her are out of commission the sooner we can work on rebuilding," Wharf Rat said.

A few seconds later, and twenty miles away, a giant tornado of sand fell apart and the mutated woman in the middle of it fell a couple hundred feet, cussing all the way down. Similar scenes played out all over the city as Shatterbirds lost the ability to control resonant frequencies and carry their telekinetic abilities across them. They were jubilant until they found a shelter that had been melted open with concentrated acid, and the interior of it was filled with blood, but no bodies. That sobered the mood again.

"I just noticed," Parian said to the mouse on her collar. "Look at the places that have been ripped open. Convenience stores, some gun shops, stuff like that, sure. But look at that grocery store, it's been ransacked. So has that one, and that one." She flew in a wide arcing circle now, much bolder and much higher now that the issue of Shatterbird was resolved. All she needed to watch for was flying Genesis projections or Crawlers that had mutated wings.

The rats streamed in to investigate, and found a common theme. Fresh meat was gone, the seafood displays were cleaned out, preserved meats were missing, poultry was completely absent, and even the canned tuna was off the shelves. Clones had ransacked the place looking for meat to feed their mistress. Probably from all over the city. And that put the missing bodies from the shelter into horrifying new light.

"We're not gonna make it across the city before dark," Trainwreck said. "We're having to slow down too much for the clones. We're heading away from Lamia and towards the Tower, but there's still a ton of these things and we lose as much time avoiding them as we do fighting them. Between that and the crap road conditions, we're not going to get there until after sundown."

Leet scratched his chin. It was a long lantern jaw like a parody of his partner's strong cleft chin. "The clones should have been slowing down. We're moving away from the source, and we're making better time than they'd be on foot. As they spread out in a broader perimeter, they should be thinning out, fewer clones covering more area, even with the constant production of them from the Lamia. But if anything it's gotten thicker, tougher, as we've gone. There seems to be more clones in front of us than behind us."

Uber shrugged. "Well, they do have teleporters."

"Shit," Danny muttered. "They have teleporters. And they come in variations, not all of them are going to trade places like the original Trickster. There's probably a few that can open portals or something to move huge numbers of clones at once. And where would be the first place they'd attack?"

"The Tower that we're headed towards," Trainwreck said, scowling. "Look, I know the plan was to re-connect with the heroes and then go after Lamia, but that plan is starting to suck. We can cut southwest and get to herself pretty soon, finish this off. With her dead, we can at least know that things aren't getting worse at an exponential rate. Do you think the eight of us have a shot?"

"I can't answer that," Danny said. "Let's get the Gambler, and then we'll take a shot at it." Up above, Parian's mouse indicated for her to drop low so that she could get new instructions. And minutes later she was flying off west towards Shearsea, while the rest of the team cut towards the south.

The sun was near setting when Uber ran out of ammunition. "That's it for me," he said. "Let me know when you guys see another gun store, I might be able to re-equip if we've got time."

"We won't have time," Wharf Rat said. "But we'll find a way to keep you useful."

"We're dealing with a lot more Genesis than we used to," Leet said. "I think it's because she's crippled, so she's concentrated closest to the source."

"There's more of everything," Panacea said. "But especially Genesis. Which sucks, I'm not very good against those."

"Leave some for the rest of us," Trainwreck chuckled. "Maybe I don't want every fight to end just because you got your hands on the bad guys."

Circus punched him lightly on the shoulder. Her expressions couldn't be made out, but she managed to emote some anyway. Then she went back to measuring out her next Molotov cocktail, wedging a rag in the neck, and vanishing it to her interdimensional space where she stored her weapons.

"Doppelgangers, twelve o'clock," Wharf Rat reported. "Guns and knives." It was the weirdly human-looking mutants that could seem to be just members of the populace, if not for their distinctive smell and their murderous intent, and the fact that the populace was all sitting in shelters at the time.

Oni Lee nodded and jogged off to the side to be safely clear of the others before he teleported. He reappeared in the midst of the murderous mutants that had the deceptively attractive features. He flung one body at another with uncanny strength and precision until they were all fallen, then waited for the convoy to catch up with him.

A Shatterbird clone stumbled at them from the side, bleeding from hundreds of gashes. It seemed that when she lost control of glass, she was in an awkward position. She shambled forward with a lurching gait, holding a two-by-four and swinging it erratically. A rat emerged from the pile of garbage next to her, snipped her Achilles tendon, waited for her to fall, then severed her radial artery and then slunk back to safety. Another rat across the alley watched her to make sure she died promptly, but then something else caught its attention.

"Heads up," Wharf Rat called out, "Parian's back!"

The massive wings settled onto the pavement. Only the front edge of it actually had any strength or volume, an airfoil for lift and also enough telekinetic strength to flap the wings. The rest of the wing was broad flat silk taken from a parachute at a skydiving school, giving her a large gliding surface. As soon as they touched down the smaller of the two small figures disentangled herself and ran for the convoy. "Hey Wharf Rat!" she called out as she jogged across the pavement.

"I didn't expect you to show up in person," he said. "I thought Parian would just ask our questions and get our answers and we'd leave you in safety."

"Yeah, but my odds of survival are good, and I knew you'd have plenty of important questions for later," said Dinah Alcott, currently answering to Gambler.

"You knew that, huh?" he said, bending down to give her a hug.

"I didn't check because I knew," she said, and returned the hug. "Now then, you need to kill Lamia, and you've got a plan, you just need the right entry point, yeah?"

"Basically. I can't scout with my rats, the space is too tight and they keep getting killed. We've tried getting Uber to be an expert on the city's sewers but that really didn't help."

She nodded. "Okay. 'Hot and cold' isn't the easiest game to play for me, but I'll give it a shot." She stood in place, murmuring to herself for a few minutes, then looked up. "I need you to drive me that way," she said, pointing down one street. They loaded her into the tank and rode out, taking out Genesis projections as they popped up. They paused to take a few more readings, then kept driving. And finally, Dinah told them to stop. She climbed out, and paced around a bit. "Okay," she said. "this spot here? That's the halfway. So, what you should probably do is about five feet that way," she said. Oni Lee bent down and swiped his nano-saws, carving an X exactly where she indicated. Then she got back in the tank and started leading the way even further away. The light was fading, but Trainwreck just turned on a dozen headlights and kept driving. Parian took out a few Hatchet Faces, her giant tarp-spider grabbing them and slamming them against walls until something vital broke. Circus took out some Ravagers with throwing knives, Oni Lee dealt with Genesis projections and Crawlers. "Right here," she said, leaning forward in her seat. Trainwreck put on the brakes, and they all exited the vehicle.

Wharf Rat noticed the rust that covered the tank, corroded through to the framework. Side windows were dusty and cracked, rubber seals were peeling and discolored. Just a few hours after this thing had been built, it was falling apart. And the massive engine in the back was making worrying sounds. He walked away from it, and saw that Trainwreck was already picking out some new cars to fashion into a new suit for himself. Oni Lee marked the spot for the second incursion, and everyone made a mental note to memorize the area. Then they walked all the way back to the first mark, and began the process of killing Lamia.

"You're totally sure this will work," Leet said.

"Totally," Wharf Rat said.

"I'd like to be that sure, too," the little inventor said. "Walk me through your thinking."

"Fighting Lamia is going to be like fighting Crawler, or any very large, very high-power regenerator," Wharf Rat said. "Manageable pieces. We know that neither of them is a duplicator, so if they're cut into parts only one of those parts will regenerate, the rest will just die. Now when Oni Lee was cutting Crawler up earlier, the part that had the head was always the part that regenerated. But when the Travelers were trying to contain Lamia, they would use sunfire to burn her head completely off, and all the rest of the human torso along with it. So, the source of her regeneration isn't in her brain. That makes the logical conclusion from there is that whatever part of the body is the biggest is the part that will regenerate, the rest will die. So we cut her in half, then quarters, and keep her from regenerating. And then we just keep whittling until it's done. Fortunately, we've got three of those nano-saw weapons, and if we're smart about it we can leapfrog them to keep cutting her into smaller and smaller bits until she's something we can destroy all in one shot."

"I'm not convinced, but you really do seem confident," Leet said. "Okay, let's see what goes wrong first."

"You're a very unpleasant little man."

"They say that no plan survives contact with the enemy. I think you have yet to learn how true that is."

"Here," Uber said, the expert navigator. The rest of the team mustered up near him, looking at the X scored in the concrete.

"Okay," Trainwreck said. His new armor gleamed and purred, the car's engine repurposed to drive a steamwheel on his back, shedding a cloud of steam continuously as the motor ran. "So, we start here, then Oni Lee teleports to Site B, and pins it there, then we work backwards, yeah?"

Leet shouldered his way through. "See, this is how it's supposed to work," he grumbled, pulling the pickaxe out of his backpack. "Not like dirt. Not like back at the beginning of this fiasco." He struck the ground a few times, and the concrete disappeared with a small popping sound. Uber hooked the grapnel through the straps of Leet's costume and lowered him down. Another pop, and they lowered him some more. Eight more pops, and then Leet called up, "I've found it! And it is ugly! Get me up out of here!"

Oni Lee helped Uber haul Leet up out of the hole, and then he took the pickaxe and teleported to Site B. Circus stood by with one of the nano-saws, and then Panacea leaned over the hole and opened the mouth on her Crawler-armor. And gallons of Crawler's acid poured out of her mouth, searing the flesh underneath and boiling it away with a terrible stench. Circus dropped into the hole before the acid was done with its work, catching herself upside-down with her feet braced on either side of the tunnel and planting the nano-saw into the wall of the sewer pipe, set on its automated configuration. It sprang up a large hedge of hazy air, a blurring effect from the disassembly of all molecules. And it completely blocked the tunnel, separating one side from the other. Lamia was cut in two, with no way to rejoin the two halves. The smaller half began to decay, to degrade, while the larger half struggled to regenerate the damage. But the regenerated flesh was instantly vaporized, growing into the haze and being destroyed over and over.

The front end of Lamia, the face of Noelle, screamed so loudly that it could be heard for several city blocks. Her strength gone, she collapsed onto the pavement, heaving for breath as her body broke down. Her flesh ruptured under its own weight and copious fluids poured out. She melted onto the pavement, leaving the sacs of her captives to pull themselves to freedom. And while Circus pulled herself back up to the surface, Trainwreck flashed his headlights several times, signaling Oni Lee to repeat the process. In a minute, the massive monster Lamia was reduced to a section of body trapped in the sewers, with no head nor tail, bound at either end by a cloud of nanite disassemblers. Nowhere to regenerate to, nowhere to move or struggle. Not enough space to summon any clones to help itself out of there. No way to communicate with its spawn.

And then the group reconvened at the midpoint, pacing off the middle of Lamia's body before Leet pulled out his pickaxe again. He chopped down until he saw the grotesque translucent flesh, and then he made room for Oni Lee to leap down with the last nano-saw weapon. He slashed and cut deep, the regeneration slowed by his Butcher powers, and he filled in with explosions to exacerbate the wounds. And he slashed and burned until he had the body severed through, pushed back until he had enough room to plant the nano-saw as a protective hedge. He leaped out while her body attempted to regenerate through the lethal barrier, and half of what was left of her fell away.

Wharf Rat was sitting on a stoop, resting up, when Parian swooped over to him. "Got a problem, boss. The nano-saw that we need can't be moved. Oni Lee planted it too deep, nobody can switch it off. If you reach too close, it'll remove your hand. I can't even get it with my threads. Leet says we can't dig underneath it to get it, because if it falls the wrong way it'll kill one of us, or dig itself a hole to the earth's core, which would kill us all. So, we can't replant that nano, and that means that we can't cut Lamia in half again without lifting one of the other two nanos, which would let her regenerate even more."

He sighed. "Okay, you get back to the site and keep trying to help, come up with ideas. I'll be brainstorming." She nodded and flew off, and he slumped back against the doorframe behind him.

The city was quiet, no car horns and no engines. The people had been in their shelters for hours, most of a day now, and some elderly people or those with terminal illnesses would be dying from lack of medical care. Others would be getting stir crazy and starting trouble. And all of them would be hungry by now. But right now the streets were still filled with murderous monsters with superpowers. The only thing that would really help at this point was the combined efforts by the Protectorate, and even then it could take days to make the whole city safe again. A rat two blocks away saw something large and terrifying, and the rodent turned to watch it pass by. "Oh," Danny said, sitting upright. "Ah, shit." He started to send his rats to muster the others but then he paused. And something clicked. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked down the street towards the monster.

"Hey," Danny said, nodding towards the Crawler.

"Hero," the Crawler growled through its garbled guttural voice. "No, the Wharf Rat, the Druid."

"Wharf Rat will be fine," Danny said, inclining his head. The monster was bigger than before, with longer legs and a faster-moving profile. The tentacles that emerged from its joints and flanks were wreathed in a shroud of blurred air, the distinctive sign of nanite disassemblers. He had healed from Oni Lee's attack, and he had adapted to it. "So, you got free when we cut off Lamia's front end."

"I did," the thing snarled, stalking closer, its tail lashing.

"So, you came to finish off Lamia for yourself?"

Crawler paused. "It's not dead?"

"It's hurt, and struggling, and contained, but it's not dead. We're having trouble getting the last bit of it. I'm not surprised you want revenge against her."

"Why is that?" the monster demanded, straightening its posture and walking forward a few more steps.

Danny shrugged. "This thing swallowed you and started making clones with your powers. Hundreds of them, some of them every bit as tough as the original. And all of them serving her. Not themselves, just her. I thought maybe you'd be tired of serving others after Jack Slash walked away from you."

Its eyes narrowed suspiciously. "I came here to fight your man. The teleporter."

"And you're welcome to it. But I don't recommend killing him. Have you heard of the Butcher?"

"I have," the Crawler smiled through a forest of long fangs. "He has so many powers, and they are a gift to anyone that kills him."

"Right," Danny said. "All his powers. Even the one that wipes out his willpower and identity."

"You lie," the massive beast shot back.

"Rats can smell a lie, and I'm betting you can too," Danny said. "Tell me if I'm lying. One of Oni Lee's powers wipes out his mind, that's why he's so pliable that I've been able to keep a powerhouse like him on my team working for me."

"Not lying," Crawler said, sounding disappointed. "Whoever kills the Butcher gains his powers, but becomes a slave."

Danny shrugged. "Sorry. But maybe you two can still fight after Lamia's dead, just not to the death."

"You've taken the fun out of it," Crawler said, his stance relaxing. "This city is choked with lesser versions of me. Not, as you suggested, as tough and strong as me. She's ruining my good name. I cannot even hunt them down for a good fight, they are not my equal. But monsters like the Lamia are written of in history books. I will have it written that this creature was killed by the Crawler, and then I will be written into the history books. My name will outlive Jack Slash and the Siberian."

Danny walked down the street with the Crawler padding along at his side. The other parahumans working with him stiffened up, backing off, but Danny waved to them to stand down. They watched as the two figures approached.

"No, seriously, a baby shower," Danny was saying. "I mean, they all knew in advance, but I didn't know anybody knew until we were at the baby shower and they made the offer to back me up anytime I asked. God, I wish someone had a camera there so I could have seen my own face."

The Crawler was actually chuckling at the anecdote as the approached the squad. Oni Lee, Leet and Uber, Parian, Panacea, Trainwreck, Circus and Gambler all stared at the monster, not speaking. "I've come to do what you could not," the massive monster growled. It lowered its forelegs, and leaped down into the pit that Leet had carved. It pried loose the nano-saw that stood guard at that end, the tentacle cutting a trough through the concrete and then sweeping through the body of the weapon, destroying it to disable the nanite barrier. The Lamia's flesh immediately bloomed forward, attempting to regrow the creature. The Crawler's tentacles lashed all about, cutting it to pieces. It used the Siberian shell to push forward, shattering open the tunnel and forcing his way forth against the tide of meat. It advanced, implacable, slicing away parts that died faster than they regenerated, pushing deeper and removing more and more of its mass. The ground above it heaved as the massive beast displaced concrete with incalculable strength. The tentacles swept about, and eventually it ran out of Lamia.

All over the ground were gobbets of flesh that broke down and decayed, nothing that regenerated. The Crawler had pushed all the way to the far side of the tunnel, guarded by another nanite barrier. It would be easy to leave, all the Crawler needed to do was to use one nanite tentacle to destroy the weapon from underneath and not charge it like a maddened animal. It looked, and saw Oni Lee the Butcher standing on the other side of the nanite haze. It knew better than to kill the man, but maiming him would certainly be entertaining. And then the Crawler's mind was seized by a wild rage, a murderous instinct that would not be denied. It lunged forward, charged like a maddened animal. It collided headfirst with the nanite barrier and fell forward, vaporizing as it went. Its own momentum dragged what was left of the body into the haze of disintegration.

Parian squatted on the edge of the pit. "You know, I legitimately forget that he has that power," she said. The tarp-spider reached down to help Oni Lee exit without teleporting explosively.

"Okay, no more Lamia, no more original recipe Crawler," Leet said. "But tens of thousands of clones. So, at least now it's as bad as it's going to get, that's a thing. Also, we're out of nano-saws, it's full dark, we haven't heard from the Protectorate for hours, and I'm really wondering whether it's more likely that this city gets walled off like they did with Nilbog, or that they just nuke it and start over."

"I'm tired of this city turning into a radioactive wasteland," Uber said. "Let's make that not happen."

"Agreed," Leet said.

"Get me to a fabric store, and I'll get you all to the Protectorate tower within the hour," Parian promised.

The city's power plants had been offline for half a day, but Danny was sure that the tower should have had a backup generator at work to keep it at least at emergency power. As soon as they were within his six-hundred-foot radius, he mobilized the rats and had them swarm up to take a look.

"Holy shit," he gasped. "Guys, the tower, it's been overrun. It's a ruin in there." _Taylor was in there._

"Fuck, they must have been hit hard while we were in transit," Trainwreck cursed, punching the denim layer he sat on. The creation was oddly spindly looking, with a dozen flapping wings that kept them aloft. "The teleporters moved the assault force here, because it's a static defense, instead of trying to find us while we were on the move."

The rats were stopping at a series of hermetically-sealed barriers. "Armsmaster's workshop is sealed up tight. It's the most heavily-fortified part of the tower. That's our best shot," Danny said, trying not to hope. Trying not to lose hope. The roil of conflict filled his stomach and his mind, the frustration. Had he done the only right thing? Had he missed the right path? He shoved the second-guessing away and tried to concentrate.

"We should see what's wrong with the generator," Uber proposed.

"The generator's been smashed," Leet said. "Otherwise they'd be using it. Okay, I'm guessing that's the workshop?" he said, pointing at the only intact windows on the building, a full bank on one of the upper floors, behind which all was dark. With a bare sliver of moonlight and a smattering of stars out, this was one of the darkest nights Danny had ever seen in this city. But it was still too light out to see through the window, refraction turned it into a mirror.

"That is the workshop," Danny confirmed. "Parian, can you put us in one floor above that?"

"Not cleanly," she said.

"We'll take what we can get," Danny said, and braced himself.

The cloth wings hit the side of the building with a massive slapping sound, and the nine of them tumbled across the floor. The interior was ransacked, desks toppled over and papers thrown around, even the ceiling tiles were pulled down and laying in a soggy mess on the floor.

"Ow," Leet groaned. "Got a sprain here."

"Cuts and bruises," Parian reported.

"Me too," Gambler said, her voice surprisingly upbeat.

"On it," Panacea said, pulling herself upright. Her Crawler suit was stripped down and lightweight, barely more than a thick layer of clothing over her body. But the tiny tears in it from the crash landing were already regenerating, thickening and toughening. The leather-like layer peeled back from her hand, and she laid her palms onto Leet, Parian and Gambler in turn to heal their injuries.

"Oh! I can see now!" the small girl said. "Neat!"

"It's dark," Panacea pointed out. "If you guys are going to need nightvision, I should give you nightvision." She continued around the circle, refitting everyone's eyes. Danny even got his nearsightedness fixed, and suddenly he was better able to see in the dark without his glasses than he had been able to see in the light with them before.

"I could see working with you long-term if you're gonna hand out upgrades like this," Trainwreck said, and Circus nodded along with him. She was reaching behind her back and pulling out components of his armor, handing them off to him to strap himself in. He started to step into a heavy steel boot with steam-driven pistons, then paused. "Hang on, Circus, this one still has one of your Molotovs in it," he said, pulling the homemade incendiary bomb out of the boot and and handing it back to her. It hit her hand and disappeared.

Oni Lee scooped his hand down through the wreckage of the room and came up with a razorlike sword with a long straight blade and a needlelike point. His other hand came up with a belt full of throwing knives that he looped over his shoulder. Uber tapped the smaller man's shoulder, and nodded at the sword. "Can you spare one of those for me?" he asked. Oni Lee reached down and used his Butcher power to turn loose materials into new shapes, and created a sword for Uber.

"Okay, we keep Gambler at the middle," Danny said. "Panacea, keep a close eye on her. Parian, can you reshape this thing into something combat-oriented?" He patted the deflated fabric that had carried them in.

"Hmm, this'll be different, it's not out in the open like the Leviathan fight," she thought about it, squinting as she considered. "Yeah, I may have just the thing." Threads started unraveling themselves, and the cloth split open and began reconfiguring itself.

"Oni Lee, can you see anything I don't see?" Wharf Rat asked the assassin.

Oni Lee looked down, and held up six fingers. He looked up, and swept his sword from one side of the ceiling to the other.

"I take that to mean that there's six people in the floor below us, and the top levels are stuffed full, probably enemies," Danny said. From up here he had a small contact with the ground, and was only able to call up a small number of rats and bring them up through the walls. He considered waiting, cruising around the block to muster up more rodents. But for all he knew, time was of the essence. The Slaughterhouse Nine and Lamia had double-teamed the city and the Protectorate, and there was no way to know who might be killed or tortured if he spent an hour gathering rats. So, he was under-equipped, but he had a good team with him. And, he had a silent vow to himself to never be forced onto the defensive like this, working on someone else's timetable. This was the last time, he swore. From this day forward, every confrontation he was in, he was in on his own terms.

"Trainwreck, you ready?"

"Locked up tight," the long-haired man said, flexing his mechanical muscles.

"Uber? Leet?"

"Give us the countdown," Uber said, his partner nodded.

"Circus? Oni Lee?" Two nods.

"Parian? Panacea?"

"Few more seconds," Parian said as her new creation filled out.

"I could use some buffing," Panacea said. "The Crawler-suit needs something to adapt to before it'll get tougher."

Uber turned and very carefully, very precisely started cutting into her arm. He laid the blade on her forearm and drew back, leaving only shallow cuts that would not penetrate all the way to her skin. On his third pass the blade did not cut, merely scraped across the new scales that had formed on the surface. He whacked at her a bit harder, and the suit began to bulk up, adding padding underneath to cushion the blows. She began accelerating the process, and the suit began to grow thicker and stronger by the second.

"Okay," Wharf Rat said, nodding. "Let's get upstairs and see what we're dealing with."

"You mean downstairs," Leet corrected him. "That's where the workshop full of superweapons is."

Danny shook his head. "And it's locked up so tight that not even my rats can get in. They're not going to unlock that until the enemy is dead, if they're smart, and they are smart. We go up, we clean house, then we head down to the workshop."

"Hate this," Leet said under his breath, but he nodded his acceptance.

The rooms were pitch black and difficult even with their upgraded eyes. The mess and wreckage was so complete that every step was stepping over something or turning sideways to get between the desks or ducking under a hanging light fixture. But at least the place was blessedly clear of broken glass. Oni Lee went first to shove a way through the debris, then Circus, then Wharf Rat. Following him was Gambler, then Panacea, then Parian, then Trainwreck. Danny gave short terse directions to lead Oni Lee towards the stairwell.

"It's going to be locked down in the power outage, I trust that's not a problem?" Danny said. Oni Lee grabbed the handle and pulled, hard, yanking the latch open with a squeal of stainless steel meeting its match. The panel sagged on its hinges, and the small squad moved in, heading upwards. "Hold up a minute," he said. The rats crawling up through the building were lagging behind, there were nearly as many obstructions inside the walls as there were out on the floors. But finally they did reach the right level, and gnawed through the sheetrock to get a good look inside.

"Damn," Danny said. "There's definitely something up. I see a bunch of mutants, lots of different kinds. Some Ravager, some Trickster, some Crawler, even some of those doppelgangers. A whole squad of Hatchet Faces over in one corner away from everyone else. And others, I think... shit. That's mutant clones of Assault and Battery. And Miss Militia, and Triumph. At least a dozen of each. I hope the Wards got away clean," he said, thinking of Taylor, "but this is gonna be tough. Probably too tough. I'm ready to go back to Leet's plan and try to re-equip down at Armsmaster's workshop. We're probably going to need nano-weapons or new armor before we're ready for this."

They backtracked down the stairs, quietly and carefully. The floor with the workshop was empty of anything but bodies and breakage, and they moved quickly and confidently to the door. Wharf Rat knocked on the door, and called out for Armsmaster.

"Fuck off," came Colin's voice.

"We'd rather resupply, then go kill those things two floor up," Danny replied. "We accidentally lost the nano-saws you gave us earlier, and we're gonna need them if we're tackling all of them."

"So they got you too, huh Danny," Colin said, sounding weary. "Screw it. Whole damn city's a lost cause."

"Nobody got me," Danny said. "When I left Lamia, everything was going fine and the team had everything under control."

There was a pause. "Lamia?"

"The big damn snake-woman. Noelle, they were calling her. The thing in the wall that the Travelers were protecting. Say, Armsmaster, do you, uh, do you have Benthic in there?"

"So, Noelle, Lamia, that's the only one you know about?"

"The only what?"

"Never mind. Who do you have with you?"

"Panacea. Uber and Leet. Parian, Oni Lee, Trainwreck and Circus. And Dinah Alcott."

"All right," Colin's voice came. "I'm gonna open the door. Because if they got you, and Dinah, and Oni Lee, this is all over anyway."

The vault door slid up out of its locks and then rolled aside, braced in the reinforced wall. Armsmaster stood in the doorway, his massive construction armor even more impressive than the last time Danny had seen it. "Hmm. You all do seem all right," he said, staring back and forth across the nine of them. "No deformities, all dressed in some clothes that would be hard to fake up. The odds they'd be able to dummy you all up right is pretty slight." He tapped a control, and the hazy barrier between him and them dissipated. "Get in quick, I need to lock this up," he said, and the armor's giant waldo-arms waved them to enter. He flinched back from Panacea before she lifted the Crawler-face away from her own like a hood, opening the suit halfway.

Danny's eyes scanned across the room. He ignored the equipment and weapons and looked at the people. Gallant and Aegis were sitting close together, both of them clearly injured. Aegis was missing an arm and half a leg, his face showing the skull across half of it. Gallant was sitting on his good side, his face slashed in dozens of places and crudely bandaged. Dauntless sat on a bench, his elbows on his knees, his head hanging, seeming daunted for the first time. Velocity was fidgeting next to some racks of weapons. No Taylor. No Flechette, or Bonesaw. Armsmaster was locking the door back down, faster than he'd opened it.

"So what happened upstairs?" Danny asked.

"They teleported in and took the lobby immediately," Dauntless said. "The elevators, the motor pool. They started working their way up. Every non-powered human they got, they killed and dragged away to feed that monster. Triumph and Miss Militia were with Gallant and Aegis, interrogating Burnscar. They held the subhumans off for a few minutes while Aegis and Gallant escaped, and shot Burnscar dead just before they were overwhelmed. The subhumans worked their way up the building level by level, I was evacuating people from the executive floor. Velocity had to abandon the Hub and come up here, I was the last one in. They've tried to break in, tried to get us to open the door. It feels like a week, it's only been a few hours."

"We've had an eye on the surroundings for a bit," Velocity said. "We planted cameras during the scare with Faultline, and they've got their own power source so we could tap into those. We've had to leave the lights off, we try to convince them that we're dead in here or gone, so they'll leave us alone. We saw when the Wards came close, saw what happened, and they left towards the south. We saw Flechette and your d- saw Benthic show up a couple blocks over with Bonesaw, but they left too. We couldn't communicate with them, anything we make with a microphone or a speaker is going to be destroyed instantly."

"Not anymore," Leet said, reaching into his bag and pulling out the flat box of his resonant-frequency canceller. "This shuts off all Shatterbird powers. We can get comms working again."

"Fucking finally," Armsmaster said, reaching for a handful of components.

Panacea was treating Gallant's wounds, sealing the lacerations and prompting his body to replace the blood more quickly. Then she moved over to Aegis, and tried to decide where to start. "The only spare biomass I have is the Crawler suit," she said. "I'm not sure what would happen if I fused it to your body to replace your limbs. It could kill you and turn into a full-fledged Crawler."

"You just need biomass?" Danny said. "Like, living meat and bone that you can alter to heal him?"

"That's right," Panacea said, nodding.

"Armsmaster, could you open the door just enough to let in a couple dozen rats?" Danny said.

"You're going to need those rats," Aegis pointed out. He sounded very calm and reasonable for someone who had no less than five obviously lethal injuries.

"You're going to need arms and legs and a face," Danny countered.

Aegis shrugged, and spread his hands in surrender. "Okay, I won't push the issue."

"So what did they do with the parahumans they caught?" Trainwreck asked. "How did they get those copies upstairs? You talked about them killing the unpowered and taking the powered ones, so did they teleport them back to Lamia then teleport them back here?"

"What?" Dauntless asked, looking up. "What, no. No, they used the other Noelles they brought here."

The room was swept with a sudden shock of silence, broken only by the pattering of rat claws entering the room. "I beg your fucking pardon," Trainwreck said. "It sounded like you said they've got more Noelles and they brought them here."

"Yeah," Velocity said. "About three of them upstairs. One looks like a Hatchetface, one looks like a Crawler, and one looks like a girl. But they've all got these legs covered with eyes and mouths, sort of an early version of the main one, the Lamia. And there are three more out there somewhere, away from here."

Danny sagged against the wall, letting out a slow heartfelt "Ffffuuuuuuuuuuuucck."

"Remember when you said that the hard part was done and it wasn't going to keep getting worse?" Uber said, elbowing him in the shoulder. "Remember that part? Huh?"

Danny thumped his head against the wall as he thought, working his brain. "Okay. Armsmaster, do you have enough nano-weapons to vaporize the top levels of this building?"

"About halfway there already, and I could catch up fast," the tinker said, his hands still working quickly to build a set of communicators for the team. "But if you do that, we lose Assault, Battery, Triumph and Miss Militia. We have to try to save them."

"Of course," Danny said, knowing that if he hesitated even slightly then that was likely to be the last assistance he ever got from Armsmaster or any of the others. "I just want to have a backup plan, and also a credible threat I can use as a bargaining position."

Colin's face was incredulous. "You want to talk to them. Like Circus and Trainwreck."

"Not like that," Danny said. "I'm negotiating the release of hostages. I need a dialogue to do that." He was more than tempted to just liquidate everything above the workshop and be done with it. He could seriously believe that losing four heroes was a small price to pay for losing a dozen evil clones of each one, plus the Hatchet Faces and the Crawlers and all the rest. Hell, losing four heroes was a small price to pay just to kill the three Noelles upstairs. But to Colin these were his friends, and he would not brook that sort of talk, Danny knew.

Just like he knew that this was going to be ugly and brutal. But there was no room for mercy or hesitation.

A single rat slipped out of a vent and scrambled to the boardroom that the mutants were using for their headquarters. It was a massive room, more so with the giant table smashed to pieces and thrown out the windows. Hatchet Faces were not allowed in here, they were a distraction and an obstacle. The mahogany paneling on one wall was almost obscured by containment foam, holding Assault and his wife Battery and Miss Militia and Triumph all fastened upright to the wall. Triumph's mouth was sealed shut with more foam. They were all bruised and battered, Assault had two black eyes, and the rest of them glared hatefully at the room full of clones. Most of the clones here were of themselves, their own faces repeated several times over and grinning as they chatted amiably about horrific tortures and widespread slaughter. And in three posh lounges where the Noelles, just as Velocity had described. One humanoid Crawler, one gray-skinned Hatchet Face, and one girl that could have been the sister of the girl from the sewer tunnel. The rat dropped his payload and scrambled to a vent, ducking out of sight.

And then the Druid appeared, in full regalia, standing right in the room. A half-dozen Miss Militia clones whirled, guns raised and fingers tense on the triggers. Their powers did not make them any clothes, but they were perpetually armed. They favored heavy weapons, assault shotguns and bazookas and a tripod-mounted machine gun. "Hold up," one of the Batteries said, stepping forward. "It's a hologram, that's all," she said. "What do you want, Rat?"

"I'm here to negotiate the release of hostages," he said. "But it's hard to know where I stand. Are you the sort that believes that one should always execute one hostage outright just to establish that you're serious?"

"Oh, maybe I do believe that," Battery said, nodding to a Miss Militia, who pointed her auto-shotgun at Assault's head, shoving the barrel into his cheek hard enough to bruise. "Time to grovel, Rat, you're going to have to offer a lot if you want these four back."

"I wasn't clear," the Druid said, inclining his head. "I'm not here to negotiate the release of your hostages to me. I want you to negotiate my hostages from me." And then a white flash ensconced the leftmost Noelle, the Crawler clone with the horrific legs covered in sharp-fanged mouths and bloodshot eyes. As soon as the white flash faded, he began falling apart, as if every part of his body was rejecting every other part, breaking down to chunks then slivers then a thin soup that soaked into the carpet.

"It came from the floor!" the Battery clone bellowed, waving at the others to move forward. An Assault smashed the floor to reveal the crawlspace beneath, and the spent remains of one of Bakuda's bombs. The other two Noelles scrambled away from the spot, stumbling backwards.

" _That one_ came from the floor," Druid said, folding his hands behind his back. "Now, nobody leaves. I've already got the exits covered. I'll consider letting hostages leave if you can give me something of equal or greater value."

"Like what?" the girl Noelle growled, her hair hanging in front of her face.

"There were six of you, and only three, I mean two, of you are here," Danny said. "Tell me where to find the other three, and I'll let these two go. I'll hunt you down later, but at least you'll be alive and free for a while. A day's worth of safety from me and the Protectorate. If we have a deal."

"Don't do it," the naked Battery clone said. She was mostly accurate, except that half her hair was missing and her scalp was covered in a thorny lumpy mess, and one of her legs looked to be about three inches short. "He's bluffing. For this kind of thing, you can raise the stakes. Tell you what, Druid man, if we give you that information, you let these two go and you promise to never hunt them or hurt them ever again."

"You're wasting my time with that kind of deal," Danny said, waving it away. "Each one of these Noelles is a walking genocide, why would I voluntarily let two of them go? Only if I know it's temporary, and that I'm getting a permanent solution to the other three. But first, I've got a question for the Noelles: has any of you or your creator had a tattoo of a C kind of tipped on its back side, halfway like a U?"

"Oh," the Battery clone snickered. "You mean Cauldron."

"I do."

"Oh, that's funny," the girl Noelle said. "No, none of us were ever branded by Cauldron, but all of this did start when we took one of their potions and got transformed."

"But funny enough," Battery added, "that's not even the reason that Cauldron is not going to let the Protectorate or the PRT help you out here, Ratman. It's because Shatterbird is being protected by Cauldron. She's one of their operatives, and Cauldron thinks her life is important enough to tell Battery Number One here to break her vows and make sure that Shatterbird goes free."

"Really?" said a Triumph with a loose-fitting jaw and a cluster of tumors around his chest and throat that looked like the wattle of a turkey. "I thought it was because the Ratman here has been snooping around Cauldron business. They're rather famous for punishing anyone that gets into their business."

"Siberian was a Cauldron too," Druid added. "He had the tattoo on the back of his hand."

"Siberian was a woman," the Noelle girl said. "And she didn't have any tattoos but those stripes."

Druid barked a laugh. "Seriously? You need to talk to some of your Crawlers about that, they know more than you do. But enough stalling, I want the location of the last three Noelles. And for wasting my time, only one of you gets to go free when I get what I want."

"How about one of us goes free when we give you the locations, and we trade the other one for your friends here?" the Battery clone said, gesturing towards the mahogany wall that had the containment foam and four holes in it. "What the hell?"

"You didn't think I wasn't working on a rescue, did you?" Druid said. "My teammates are already safe and sound. Now, one of you can live through this day, or you all die here. And my patience is running out."

The Hatchet Face Noelle looked at the girl, and nodded. She sighed. "Okay. One is stealing a boat and heading up the coast towards New York. One is going overland to the south, hitchhiking or hijacking, heading for Florida. The third is hiding in the city, laying low, ready to pop up in a couple weeks and start this whole process over again just when people thought they were safe."

"Thank you," Danny said. "I honestly didn't expect you to tell the truth, but you did. Okay, you two pick which one of you lives through this. Everyone else dies, but at least it'll be quick."

"Oh, it's him," the Noelle girl said, jerking her head towards the Hatchet Face version of herself. "But one thing before we part ways, hologram-man. One of our Ravagers that we set loose here in the executive floors; he had a neat knack. Instead of a clairvoyant link to anyone he hurt and festering wounds, he would instead get a sort of memory download from anyone he psychologically tormented. We learned a lot. If you want answers about Cauldron, talk to your Chief Director."

"If the stakes were less high and the timeline less crucial, I'd take you prisoner just to learn what you know," Danny said. "But that won't happen today. Okay, the nanite disassemblers are turned on. There's about a minute until this entire floor of the building is destroyed. We will allow one, and only one, person to escape by jumping out the window. Anyone after the first one gets vaporized."

"Shit," the Battery clone said, looking around at her comrades. "Well, maybe the other three will be luckier."

The Hatchet Face clone strode to the window and did not even look back, he simply dove over the edge towards the water of the Bay. And then the floor shifted under their feet, rippling and warping as the structure was turned to smoke and dust. The carpet vanished in a haze, and then the screaming started. And then the hologram projector was destroyed.

"Jesus," Colin sighed. "We just evaporated a significant portion of our own headquarters."

"And about a hundred murderous parahumans," Parian reminded him. "And rescued the hostages, and found the other three Noelles."

Danny nodded. "Dauntless, can you get what's left of your team and go after the hitchhiker? I can get my squad and take out the stowaway. Then we can return and root out the last one in her hidey-hole."

The golden-armored hero hauled his head upright, his shoulders still hunched as he slouched on the bench. His eyes had a haunted look. "I don't think they were lying, Danny. I think the PRT might have sold us out. They should have at least sent someone to touch base and make contact. If they didn't want to support us, they should have at least sent someone to make an evaluation and see if we were exaggerating. But they didn't send anyone, it's just us. I think maybe Shatterbird is more important to Cauldron than the whole city of Brockton Bay."

"I promise I'll sit right with you and worry about all of that as soon as we've killed all the Noelles and their spawn," Danny said. "But we need to do the right thing first."

Armsmaster stepped forward, the cockpit rotating to put Kid Win up to the front. "Hey, it should be easy to track them on the road," the Ward said. "With the city locked down there won't be many cars, and there's only a few roads out to the south. And we've got a lot of Wards still unaccounted for. We have no idea where Clockblocker, Vista, Browbeat, Benthic or Flechette are at. And come to think of it, I haven't seen Mouse Protector in hours. That's six potential captives who could be getting turned into an evil army."

"Yeah, boss, c'mon, time is of the essence," Velocity said, bumping the other man.

Dauntless dropped his head, staring at the floor again. "If it's so damn easy, you guys will be fine on your own. But if the PRT really did sell us out? How hard do you work to save a city that nobody wants to save? If nobody else cares?"

"God," Battery said, half a sob in her voice. Assault stepped towards her with his arms out to hug her, but she flickered away in a blur of superspeed. She zoomed to the far side of the room, her back in a corner and her arms wrapped around her stomach. "I... I don't want to be touched," she said, quavering.

"We're all just... just fucked," Dauntless murmured.

"He'll bounce back," Danny said, speaking loudly to drown out the other man's maudlin ramblings. "You guys, take the VTOL and go hit those roads. Use nanites to kill the Noelle, you can't take any chances. We'll take Parian's magic carpet out over the bay and find that one. We rendezvous here whenever we're done."

Panacea turned loose of Assault as she finished healing the man, and he joined his wife and Miss Militia and Triumph standing awkwardly near the door. Armsmaster/Kid Win led the way out the door, with Velocity, Gallant and Aegis following after. Dauntless sat alone on the bench, staring down at his hands. Danny led the way as his team made for the stairs: Trainwreck and Circus, Uber and Leet, Parian and Panacea, himself and Gambler. They walked up to the open space of the top floor, now bare to the night sky. Oni Lee teleported to them, sheathing his nano-saws. He and Danny shared a nod, and that was all they needed to confirm that the Hatchet Face Noelle was not going to bother anyone else.

He had promised safety from himself and the heroes. But his team was not him, and they were not heroes. He was not going to get worked again like he had with the Undersiders.

 _Author's note: I'm sorry for the typos that crop up, and I appreciate those that point them out to me. I tend to type more quickly than is entirely good for me, and I don't review thoroughly enough. I tend to rely on spellcheckers, and that means that homonyms can slip by me if I'm not paying attention. Again, thank you to those that help me with that, and thank you to those who bear with me through such obvious mistakes. And thank you to those who post their theories for my little cliffhangers, about half the time those comments show me what I should have done. I'll keep doing my best._


	17. Chapter 17

"No Benthic, no Flechette, no Mouse Protector," Trainwreck reported. "Just one Noelle, another Crawler-type one by the way, a tied-up Ward named Browbeat, about a hundred clones of him who by the way were pretty tough to beat, and a cargo hold full of Genesis-clones who tried to kill us with no-shit Godzillas."

"Any trouble?" Danny said, leaning against the railing of the shrimping vessel.

"Honestly? Yeah. It was a real bitch. Parian and Leet were flying loops around the ship, with her threads and his grappling hook, pulling people overboard. Uber started using judo-throws to use their strength against them, and Circus set a fire loose in the cargo hold to get rid of the Genesis-clones. Uber got beat up a lot, every time he got distracted he got pounded by bad guys that can throw cars, but Panacea kept healing him and sending him back in. Oni Lee cut up the leader and disintegrated him. I'm going to need new armor, that old stuff just got pounded to shit. So bad that Parian used her threads to tie a bunch of the Browbeats to it and we threw it overboard, so they'd drown faster. Your girl was right, we made it without casualties. But dammit, I'd have liked to not come so damn close so damn many times." Trainwreck shook his head, the ponytail flopping around his shoulders.

"Thanks for sticking with me," Danny said. "You know we probably saved the world today."

"Yeah, and I know we'll never get what's owed us," Trainwreck said. "For the work we've done, we should all be pampered with mansions and margaritas and Playboy models the rest of our lives. Instead, I may be able to use the story to get some drinks from time to time."

"Is that a problem?" Danny asked, turning to look at the twenty-something tinker.

"Shit no. If I didn't already know that the world was full of dumb assholes I'd be all disappointed, but this is exactly what I always figured would happen." He stared out at the water for a minute. "We're going after Cauldron, aren't we?"

"We are."

"The guys that took away my life, my memory, any family I might have had, my arms and legs, and left me the ability to turn scrap metal into a body made out of scrap metal? Near as I can see, you're the only one going after them. So, just think of me as your other Oni Lee. You say what you need, I'm on it."

"Thanks. It means a lot to me. I think I'll be keeping this team together, if they'll have me."

Trainwreck nodded. "That Parian girl adores you. She's quiet when you're around, but as soon as you're out of the room she talks about you like you're a messiah. Any team you start, she'll be on it."

Danny winced. "That's probably not good, honestly. I think she's just transferred her attachment to authority to me, instead of her family or professors. That's not really what I was trying for there. What about Circus?"

"What _about_ Circus?" the tinker repeated, and shrugged. "I've worked with her as much as anyone else. When one of us got hired, the other one usually did too. We were never officially partners, but we've got time in the field together. And I'm honestly not sure how crazy the bitch really is, or how much of that is an act. I don't know what she thinks or why she does what she does. But she's not acting like she usually does when she's about to walk away, she's acting like she does when she's on a long-term assignment. So, make of that what you will."

"Thanks," Danny said, turning in place to lean backwards against the railing. "I can talk to Uber and Leet myself, and Panacea."

Trainwreck nodded, and pulled a rag out of his back pocket to wipe his hands clean. "You do that. Try to keep them all, if you can. It's good to have a healer on the team, a real healer. Do you know how many teams have a healer they can put out in the field? I think it's none. If there is one, I've never heard of it."

"The Three Blasphemies," Danny reminded him.

"Oh, yeah. Shit. Okay, so now there's two: us, and a Class-S threat that makes entire nations nervous. As for those two nerds, try to get them to stay. It is really, really nice to start working with another tinker, and that Uber guy is useful in a hundred ways I didn't expect him to be. And especially keep the kid. She's probably the most powerful of us all."

"Not gonna be a problem," Danny said. "She predicted that she and I would be working as on a team of heroes outside the Protectorate."

Trainwreck tucked the rag back away. "Well, that makes it easy. Look, we've got her tucked away up at the helm where she won't see too much of the blood and guts."

Danny knocked on the door before he walked in. Dinah was sitting in the captain's chair, her feet kicking in the air. He noticed for the first time that her socks were mismatched, she had likely gotten dressed in a hurry when she was rushed off to the emergency shelters. "Hey, Gambler," he said. "Heck of a day."

"Yeah," she said, staring at the instrument panel ahead of her. "Hey, I've got something to talk to you about. It's kind of heavy, and I'm not sure I should bring it up yet. Maybe I should wait until we've taken care of the last of the Noelle monsters."

"Two Class-S threats simultaneously, deciphering the mystery of Cauldron, building a new team, my daughter's missing, we're dealing with the PRT hanging us out to dry... c'mon, hit me with whatever it is, you know I thrive under pressure."

"The end of the world."

Danny dropped into the seat next to her. "Okay, my fault for asking."

"No, like actually. C'mon, if you've got precognition powers like mine, it's only a couple weeks until you look ahead to see the end of the world. Now, the numbers fiddle about a bit back and forth, but generally it showed a ten percent chance it would happen three hundred years from now. And a one-third chance that it would happen thirty years from now. And a smidge over fifty percent that it would happen in the next five years. Today, those numbers shifted to one-third chance each. That's the biggest shift I've seen in those odds. Something we did today decreased the odds of the world dying in the next five years by twenty percent, and increased the odds of it being three centuries by twenty percent. I think that if we, you or I or any of the others, ever starts to wonder if we should do what we do, I think that's what we need to remember. There's a twenty percent chance we set the end of the world back three centuries."

"Armageddon," Danny said, rolling the word in his mouth. "The Apocalypse. Ragnarok. The Rapture, the End of Days, The Big One, Revelations, Extinction-Level Event, the Eschaton."

"What's that last one?"

"I think it's Latin or Greek, just means the same as the rest of those."

"It sounds pretty. Easier to talk about."

"Okay," he said, and he found a small smile for her. "I'm glad you shared this with me. We can go through some questions about it later, if you like. I want to make sure I'm asking all the smartest questions, after all. Wouldn't want to make things worse by accident."

"Fifty percent, almost exactly," she said.

"Well now," he said, cupping his chin in his hand. "That's kind of serious all by itself. Okay, that just reinforces the need to be patient, careful, and smart about this. C'mon, let's get off this boat and back to the city, there's people scared and suffering and in danger the longer we leave those monsters in the city."

* * *

"Well, the good news is we found your daughter, and Flechette, and they had already killed the other Noelle that was headed South, and we found a freezer full of ice cream that was melting so we ate that before it could go bad," Assault said.

"And the bad news?"

"We didn't save you any ice cream," the hero said, mustering a weak, tired smile.

"You go find your daughter, boss," Uber said. "We'll deal with this ice cream situation."

"No marks on the face," Danny said, mock sternly. Assault's expression showed that he wasn't fully certain that Uber and Danny were kidding.

An elevator ride later and a short wait, and he caught Taylor coming out of her room into the Wards' version of the Hub, her hair wrapped up in a towel and wearing only shorts and a tank top. "Hey dad," she said. "Sorry, I needed to get a shower, that was almost twenty-four hours in my armor. I've got my undersuit in the wash right now, but in the end I may just need to burn it." She stepped in close to give him a hug, and he returned it fiercely. And he could feel the reluctance in her arms. Hugs don't lie, they are some of the most sincere gestures that humans have, and there was no way to hide her misgivings and conflicted feelings.

He pulled back, and pushed a smile. "I got lucky, I lost my armor early on and never got it back. So, I understand you guys killed one of those Noelle things."

"Yeah, they regenerate pretty hard but if you destroy the body they stay destroyed. So I drove the bus, and Flechette hung out the windshield and used her power on the grille. The monster was entirely obliterated, or maybe just trapped at the molecular level inside that bus. It was kind of like that I-beam you used on Leviathan, only bigger and nastier."

"That's my girl," he grinned. "And you didn't even need to vaporize three floors of the Tower to do it. Look, there's one Noelle back, and with that there's the potential that it's going to find some way to duplicate itself again, and even if it doesn't there's thousands of evil parahumans loose in the city. We're gonna be really busy if we want to get people out of those shelters before the supplies run out. They're not meant to hold people more than twenty-four hours, but if we let people out now they'll just get slaughtered in the streets."

"Yeah, I was thinking about that," Taylor said, slumping onto a couch. "Dad, maybe we need to concentrate on evacuating the survivors and building a wall around the city like they did in Ellisburg. It may be easier to get the survivors out of the city than to get the monsters off the streets."

He was already shaking his head. "This is not the monster's city, this is a human city. It doesn't belong to Noelle or her spawn, and we shouldn't even think of giving it to them. And if we have to do it ourselves because the PRT won't help us or the Protectorate won't send reinforcements, then that's their own fault and our own credit."

She sighed. "I've got a spare undersuit, and I can be back in the armor in fifteen minutes. If you're going to fight them and kill them I'm on your side today. But I want it noted that I'd rather be holding a defensive perimeter while we airlift the people to safety."

"I'm not sure I should ask you to do this," he said. "Your armor is good and strong, the weapons are superb, but you don't actually have powers. You can probably just sit here in the tower, help Armsmaster and Kid Win get the power back on and the force-field generator back up and running. Honestly, I'd feel better if I could know that you're safe for the first time since this started."

"And I'd feel better if you were staying behind," she countered. "So neither of us gets what we want. C'mon, this doesn't work if we start holding back now."

"All right," he sighed. "I've got the mobile console now, so I can coordinate our response from the field. You'll still be hearing me in your comms." He stood up and gave her a smile, but did not offer another hug and neither did she.

 _Fuck,_ he thought to himself. He had a sinking feeling that his family was finally falling apart. It had been fine when his wife died, and when his daughter was being tormented. It had been fine when he started as a vigilante, and then as a hero. It had even been fine when they both joined as full-time heroes and worked together. But when Taylor watched him kill Jack Slash, things had changed in a way they never changed before. And he was slowly filling up with dread that this rift may not be the kind that heals with time.

He went to the Protectorate Hub and got his own shower, five minutes with low pressure and no heat, and it was sheer heaven. He changed clothes, stripping out of the armor's undersuit and replacing it with cargo shorts and his athletic-gear top, the outfit from his early outings as Wharf Rat. He tucked a couple bandannas in his pockets, and walked away. He considered it his favorite crime-fighting clothing: the armor had never worked out well for him and the trenchcoat was too warm for this weather. And then he grabbed a few sandwiches from the cafeteria and made his way to the parking lot.

"Are you sure this is okay?" Parian was asking, watching as the construction came together. "Those people didn't ask to have their cars cannibalized."

"Insurance will cover the damages," Trainwreck assured her. "Collateral damage from a Class-S attack is exempt from the Act of God clause. The insurance companies bundle their losses and bill the PRT, which keeps a fund set up specifically for these situations." He grunted as he crammed a bundle of exhaust pipes through a hole in the chassis and started sealing it up with bondo and duct tape.

"The resemblance to Squealer's work is amazing," Leet drawled dryly.

The long-haired tinker scoffed. "Look, Squealer had a knack for vehicles and she screwed them up by being herself. My knack is that I can do superscience faster, and cheaper, than anyone else. Sure, it doesn't last long, and it looks crude as hell, but even Squealer couldn't get you guys an all-terrain superscience battletank in just a few hours."

Panacea tapped Danny on the shoulder. "You okay? Any aches and pains to heal up?"

"Anything you can do about exhaustion or gnawing anxiety?" he quipped.

"The exhaustion, yes, that's just some fatigue toxins and some hormones. And any emotional issues you've got, well... I'm a doctor, not a psychologist."

Danny winced. "Is that going to be a thing? Star Trek quotes?"

Panacea grinned. "Wait and see. There you go, that should feel like you just had a good night's sleep. And, um, I think I've got an idea how I can help you today. Can you call some rats over here?"

He quirked an eyebrow to show his curiosity and confusion, but a dozen rats came trotting over from the shadows of the loading dock. One nearly got squashed wandering too close to Trainwreck's construction project, a counterbalance dropped as he heaved the thing up onto its new tires. They gathered in front of Panacea, in three rows of four, sitting up on hind legs. She picked one up, cradled it a bit, turned it this way and that. "Okay, I think I've got it," she said. "Okay, send him away, a block away, near the edge of your range."

He shrugged, and the rat climbed down her pant leg and then bounded away, heading across the empty street and across the parking lots across the street. And his range opened up, more rats coming into his perception. "Whoa," he breathed.

"I take it that it worked?" Amy said, smiling as if pleased with herself.

"It worked, that's amazing," he said. "I've been using some rats to delegate for others for a while now, smarter ones giving instructions when I'm not around, but this is a whole other thing. This is amazing, it extends my reach dramatically. Can you do more?"

She squatted down, and petted each of the rats in turn, for just a few seconds each. He could feel something shift in them, but he couldn't entirely put a name to it. They didn't seem any different to outside appearances. He tested them, sending them out, a wide swath of them chained end-to-end could reach nearly twenty blocks away, a huge jump from his previous limitations.

"This changes so much," he said. "I may be able to search the entire city at once like this. This is amazing, it's like they get my signal from my power and then they repeat it back out, like the way that Shatterbird resonates frequencies to boost her range."

Leet overheard and leaned their way to interject. "Except that unlike her, your powers aren't getting shut off by my machine."

"Exactly. So, all the sudden it looks like it might be really possible to find all the clones in the city and get rid of them," Danny grinned.

"Good to hear," Trainwreck said over his shoulder. "We need to be damn fast if we're going to have a city when this is over."

Oni Lee nodded, and even Circus seemed surprised by this expression from him. Panacea bit her lip. "Times like this I wish most that I could work on brains."

Danny nodded. "I get it. And I wish you could too. But maybe it's best if we don't rush it, let him come around on his own."

"I guess," she mused.

Uber set down his wrench and stretched his back out. "So, are any of the quote-unquote official heroes going to be helping with this, or are they all just sitting it out?"

"Some of the Wards, and Dauntless is helping," Danny sighed. "The four that got captured are not ready to go anywhere near this sort of trouble right now, Armsmaster is busy in his workshop, and Velocity says he's just a liability in the field. And I think it's my fault for putting that idea in his head."

"He actually is though," Leet said. "C'mon, anything tougher than a skirmish with a street-level villain, he's a dead man. Odds are that you're the one who's kept him alive as long as this."

"I can't imagine the kind of couple's counseling that Assault and Battery are going to need," Uber said, shaking his head, then he picked up a socket wrench and went back to tightening bolts for Trainwreck.

"Yeah, can you imagine if something like that happened with you and Leet?" Trainwreck asked.

"What are you talking about?" Uber asked, his forehead creased with incomprehension.

"It- you- uh, never mind," Trainwreck said, turning back to his work.

A half hour later the tank was finished, and the squad got ready to roll out. Dauntless met the rest of the team down on the pavement, with Aegis and Clockblocker and Benthic. Danny climbed to the top of the tank to address the gathered crowd. "Okay, we're going to be busy out there. Lots to do, unfortunately, and not a lot of time to do it. We're going to stay coordinated, and we're going to stay in communication. There's no Shatterbirds anymore, so we will keep our comms this time. I'm going to have all of you move straight from target to target. Each of you have certain strengths and the enemy has certain weaknesses, so I will be pairing you against your enemies based on that. That means, that you're likely to be seeing the same kind of enemies over and over again. Don't get complacent or take things for granted, these guys can be full of surprises and sometimes their powers aren't what you think they are. Got it? Now, the first few blocks are gonna go quick because I've already killed most of the mutants in that area. Everyone, stay safe and stay alert, because if you get hurt I need to get Dauntless or Aegis to carry you to Panacea, and that's three people out of the fight because of one mistake, okay?" He pitched his voice on that last word, and the assembled heroes and rogues nodded and murmured affirmatively. "Good deal. I'm in the tank with the console, Gambler and Leet are with me, Trainwreck driving. Uber, as awesome as it was watching you with a sniper rifle, we don't need to pin down sight lines or work containment today, so you're a mobile unit. All right, mounted units mount up, everyone else hit the streets and stay on comms!"

He dropped down through the hatch, while Dinah and Leet and Trainwreck walked up the ramp and took their spots. Leet was up in a bubble-like gunnery nest like the belly-gunner of a World War-era bomber, or as he pointed out the Millennium Falcon had them too. It had two sets of guns and a full swivel, so he could pick off any target he could see, though he was aimed more at aerial or elevated targets. Trainwreck operated the main controls, he buckled in and started the engines. The roar of a dozen diesels kicked in, and the whole machine rattled as the steamworks began to operate. The rattling grew less and less, the pressure sealing the whole mechanism together, and then they were ready to roll out. Dinah strapped in firmly to a jumpseat and whined that Leet had all the fun with his guns, and there was none for her. Danny just sat in his matching seat with rolls of maps and blueprints, with the console bolted to the floor and a dozen terminals clustered on it to operate the whole team, the rats working more quickly and surely than he could do with his hands.

And on the outside, rats leaped into action. The repeater-rats moved carefully through streets and alleys and storm drains, careful not to place themselves in danger lest they break the chain with the other repeaters. And every rat in their range began to move with a purpose. Months of cultivation had bred their numbers up considerably. The rodents bore large litters and reached maturity quickly, the population of rats and mice in the city had multiplied greatly since Danny had come into his powers. But for the most part he kept those rodents out of sight so as not to offend the people. Today, all bets were off. They moved through the empty city like they owned the place, spreading out to form a vast net of eyes and ears and noses, but also clusters of them to attack vulnerable targets. Any of the Shatterbird clones, or the human-looking doppelgangers, all died fairly quickly and without fuss. Fast-moving rodents would take out tendons or arteries and leave the mutants to bleed out on the ground, and move on. Any Genesis clones he found unguarded got the same treatment, a summary execution without fanfare or unnecessary effort. Trickster clones that held still too long were easy targets as well, but Ravagers and Hatchet Faces had thicker skin, tougher tissues and those were jobs for the other heroes and rogues.

The teams started out close together, but as the tank rolled out they separated out. Dauntless took a huge zone, killing out Ravagers one after another and moving to the next, never giving them a chance to fight back before his spear struck them dead with lightning bolts. Sometimes he swooped low to shoot in through windows or arced high to shoot down between buildings, but he moved from one kill to another with rarely more than three minutes between them. Oni Lee had a similar schedule, killing Crawlers with his nano-saws. Danny kept him to short-range teleports, because it was just easier to describe his next destination that way. Parian was the go-to for killing Hatchet Faces, she just stood well out of his range and sent her giant textile minions to grab the cloned villain and slam him against something until he died. Uber and Benthic worked well on Hatchet Face as well, often disabling him with some containment foam and then finishing him off with a nano-saw blade. Circus was the best for taking out Tricksters, wherever he teleported to she seemed to have already thrown a knife in that direction, and more than one appeared out of nowhere surprised to find a knife already in their neck. Panacea was nearly as fast as Oni Lee for killing Crawlers, limited more by her inability to teleport or move particularly fast. And any of them, or all of them, frequently took a turn killing Genesis projections of all types.

Wherever a cluster of Genesis clones was nested, the city nearby would be plagued by nightmarish monsters. Creepy things that climbed on walls and drooled acid, brutish beasts that bludgeoned their way through walls, flying horrors that swooped and circled. They became less of an issue as more and more Genesis clones were killed in their sleep by gnawing rats. But then the mutants began keeping their projections closer to themselves, leaving one or two monsters to guard their own bodies. But that would not stop Dauntless from raining down lightning until the guards were dead, or Circus from casually lobbing a Molotov through a window and controlling the fire to roar through and kill anyone inside before dissipating harmlessly. Clockblocker did particularly well here, freezing their projections kept the Genesis mutants from forming new projections, leaving them entirely helpless. Occasionally there was a situation with a cloned Miss Militia, Triumph, Assault or Battery. Danny was careful to keep those away from the Protectorate heroes. One of the Batterys ran straight for the tank, punching it hard enough to displace the armor plates and release a jet of superheated steam that seared her lungs and cooked half her flesh off. The clone died while the steam forced the plate back into place, the armor intact. Aegis was hard to place, he was vulnerable to Ravager, too slow against Trickster, not dangerous enough against Crawler, and easy pickings for Hatchet Face. Within a half-hour Danny had assigned the boy to ferry duty, hauling Panacea or Uber or Clockblocker to their next targets. He was reasonably superstrong and had a decent flight power, so he could reduce the travel time for his comrades. Or, Danny realized, other cargo.

"Hey, Panacea," he said into the comms. "Can you whip me up some more of these repeater rats? Maybe enough to fill this laundry hamper?" Panacea looked around and saw several dozen rats running her way, balancing a plastic hamper on their backs so that it looked like it was gliding along on a wheeled platform. She took a few minutes and created several dozen repeater rats to relay his signal, and then Aegis dropped in to pick it up and fly off, stopping every block or so to set one rat down. His range extended dramatically again. He estimated he was controlling literally millions of rats at this point.

For the more vulnerable mutants like Shatterbird and Genesis and Oliver's doppelgangers, it was a massacre, a genocide. The culling was so systematic that it became repetitive: snip the Achilles tendon, watch the target fall to the floor, cut the radial artery to disable their arm, cut the throat when it becomes vulnerable, and then move on. And when those areas were clear, the horde of rats began to sweep to the north, the repeaters moving together to keep a continuous chain of communication, the regular rats moving with them to stay in range, and new rats in the new area being added to the horde. Smarter rats were left behind in strategic areas to keep track of intersections, landmarks, or the entrances to the emergency shelters. When the repeater rats swept back south later, he'd be able to learn whatever the surveillance rats had seen. He tried to ignore how many of the shelters they saw were already broken open, emptied out, devoid of survivors. It was a painful amount.

Leet wailed with glee while he held the triggers down, blazing gunfire up into the air and bringing down another Genesis projection. He cackled and reached into his duffel bag full of supplies, tearing open a bag and uncapping a bottle to refresh himself before the next wave appeared.

"Seriously?" Danny asked, casting a judgmental look at the tinker. "Doritos and Mountain Dew? No self-awareness?"

"You live your tropes I'll live mine," Leet shot back. "Okay, Train, we're getting close. It's this storage center here on the left, just slow up and I'll let myself in and be right back in a -"

"My way's faster," Trainwreck said, piloting the rusted contraption through the front gates and bulldozing the guard-arms. "Okay, which unit's yours?"

Leet grumbled as he walked out the hatch, fishing a keyring out of his costume to unlock his unit and reclaim a cache of unused Leetware. Danny continued guiding the team, and Dinah bounced her feet in the air under her too-tall seat. "There's only a seven percent chance that you'll run across the Noelle in the process of sweeping for the regular mutants," she said to Danny.

He looked up, blinked distractedly, and nodded. "Thanks. Sorry, kinda zoned out there. I've got a lot of input and action right now, and honestly it's kind of weird that my brain hasn't exploded from all the overload, but I seem to be doing all right. Okay, if I can't just sweep around and stumble across the Noelle by accident, it'll mean that it's hiding very deliberately, and doing a good job of it. Probably avoiding places that are easy to search with rats. Vaults, skyscrapers, sealed environments, the survival shelters, or a mobile hiding place like the back of a truck or one of the ships in the bay or something. Maybe a tunnel that's been sealed shut, or a hideout that's been boobytrapped, hermetically sealed, turned invisible or something like that. Or for all I know they've got a Trickster that can teleport them through time and they won't reappear for another three weeks. That's... a lot of places to check. And that's places that are specifically picked so that I can't investigate them, which means it needs manpower."

Dinah nodded. "Yeah. Um, it kinda sounds like it's gonna have to wait until people are out, so the people can help you look. Or get a whole bunch of heroes like the Endbringer, and have those guys help look. But if they're not here yet, they're not coming."

"No," Danny agreed. "Dinah, is it possible you could tell me the odds that the monster-clone was telling me the truth about why the Protectorate isn't helping us?"

"Doesn't work like that," she said. "Can I get some of those chips?"

Danny stood up and reached into Leet's duffel bag. "Holy crap there's a dozen bags in here. This is madness, adults don't actually live like this."

A few minutes later Leet came huffing in up the ramp with a handtruck full of boxes. "Here we go. A bucket of lava, a Widow collapsible mass-driver sniper rifle, an infinite supply of bombs-"

"The round kind with the fuse? I love those," Trainwreck said, doing a nasally voice.

"Yo. Up top," Leet said, giving the other tinker a high five. "Way to go for the reference. Okay, yeah. Um, a hard-light deployable console gauntlet that can remote-hack electronics, sabotage weapons, creates a defensive force field and deploys an expendable flying combat drone. It's not real reliable because it crosses over into other inventions I've created before, but it's real versatile. This headset has a detective mode-"

"And a guaranteed lawsuit," Trainwreck observed, pointing at the ears.

"Probably. Um, a HP Materia that will permanently increase your hit points-"

"You can't be entirely serious right now," Danny said, his tone arch.

"Serious as a heart attack you probably won't have with this thing," Leet retorted. "One bottle of a tonic that will give you pyrokinesis until the irreplaceable fuel runs out, so four or five shots. And, one of these," he said, lifting out a large jar that had a small five-pointed star inside of it, bouncing back and forth as it flashed white and yellow and red over and over.

"Is that what I think it is?" Danny asked.

"It'll turn you into the Siberian for about thirty seconds," Leet grinned widely. "An invincibility star. Yeah. There was a lot more stuff in there, but Shatterbird messed most of it up, and this is the stuff that survived. Some of it is stuff I made and we never found the right job to use it on. It's remarkably hard to come up with a thematically-accurate crime that ties video games to real-world profits. Some of it is stuff I made and always intended to sell if I could find a buyer I felt I could trust. But if you make something, and can't use it, and can't throw it away, you put it in storage. So, here we are. Thanks for dropping me by to pick it up."

"No problem," Danny said, while navigating the rats and the heroes through another round of mutant monsters. "But we should get a move on, or we'll fall behind the team."

Leet scrambled back up into his gunner's nest, and took the controls to sweep the sky for flying threats. "What the- okay, whoever took my third-favorite bag of Doritos, I want you to know that I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed."

"Dinah was getting hungry," Danny explained.

"Boss, ain't nobody called Dinah on this job," Trainwreck said, glancing over his shoulder. "That's Gambler, and she's my teammate."

"Thanks Trainwreck," the girl said.

"No sweat."

Danny spoke up into his comms. "Hey, Oni Lee, I know you can sense living things with the new senses you got from the Butcher. Now, I know that Dinah said we weren't going to find the last Noelle during a sweep of the city, but it couldn't hurt to try. Could you let me know if you see any signs of someone hiding? Especially lots of someones hiding together."

The assassin considered it, then nodded solemnly. "Great, and thank you," the Wharf Rat said. "So, is everyone okay out there?"

Benthic spoke up first. "I've see a lot of dead bodies today. Lots of people killed by rats. Necks chewed open. I've seen... hundreds of them today. And every time I couldn't help but remember that you see through those rat's eyes, hear through their ears. All those hundreds of people, you had them killed. And you know what their throats taste like, their blood. You felt your own teeth cutting through them. It's... a lot to take in."

Wharf Rat shuddered. "Yeah, that's pretty gruesome. Do you want to get rotated back to the Tower? You've already done a hell of a lot, nobody could fault you for wanting to take off the rest of this day."

"I just want you to quit it," she said. "Just... I don't know. Just stop."

"I'm taking out almost half of the mutants myself," Danny said, sighing. "If I relegated those to the rest of the team, we'd make half as much progress. We would not be able to clear the city in time to let the survivors out. We're almost two days in, people are going to start losing their minds soon. They might be killing each other."

"They could be _eating_ each other!" Leet said, leaning in towards Gambler with a creepy grin and wriggling fingers. She laughed, and swatted his hands away.

"Lots of people are going to die if I stop, Benthic," he said, careful not to stumble over her name. Even in the armor and the mask, it was hard to address her as anything but his daughter.

She sighed, and nodded. "Okay. I'll butch up, I guess." Her voice had a note of resignation that shot a dart through his chest, it felt like a physical pain. Why was he making her go through this? All at once he couldn't seem to remember.

Dauntless spoke up next. "So, do I understand the plan right? We clear the mutants out off the streets, open the shelters, let people out, and then start a house-by-house search for the last Noelle, and get her before she gets us?"

"Basically," Wharf Rat said. "She's not someplace I could find her remotely. So it's going to take man-hours to search every trailer-truck and walk-in cooler and sealed room in the city. If we try that now, people will starve to death waiting for us to give the all-clear. If we clear everything we can, then give the all-clear, then nobody dies waiting for us, and they can help us find Noelle."

"When they find her, she's going to attack," Dauntless pointed out. "It'll be just as bad as this, but in the middle of the city full of people and not a sewer substation during a lockdown."

"It won't be that bad," Wharf Rat pointed out. "We found out that the young Noelles don't make new clones nearly as fast as the big Lamia did. They can't absorb someone and spit out thousands of clones whenever they want. And if you guys have your VTOL up and running, with Vista contracting space and Assault supercharging the engine, your quick-response team can be in play in five minutes. Not even Lamia can do a lot of damage in five minutes. You take her out, and we're done. Maybe ten or twenty people die. Right now, ten or twenty people are dying right this second because they're locked up underground, and that's going to get a lot worse very soon."

"There's no way that's the only answer," Dauntless muttered.

"Seriously?" Danny blurted angrily. "Do you think I looked at a big list of easy, safe, reliable answers and decided to ignore those and do this instead? This isn't the only answer, but it's far and away the best answer. Now, _Dauntless_ , are you going to help with this process or do you want to go sit in the Tower and suck your thumb while you wait for me to tell you it's okay?"

The silence crackled with anger, he was clearly unused to being spoken to in that way. "Fuck you, Wharf Rat. I'm in. I'll help. We'll save anyone we can. And then I'm going to put the spear down and beat your ass."

"Five bucks on Dauntless," Uber said.

"I'll take that action," Gambler shot back.

"Shit," Uber said. "I'm about to lose my money."

"Next part of our search pattern," Wharf Rat said, cutting in. He paused for responses, then nodded. "Okay, we'll be picking up the pace now. We're swinging west, then south. A wide search pattern, moving quickly. It's going to get worse, because we're going over the ground-zero of the Lamia site. Panacea, we'll be intersecting your path if you want that hit-point boost?"

"I did," she said, rolling her eyes. "And I honestly regret that I'm interested in this. It's just.. ridiculous. Hit points."

"Nothing ridiculous about buffing the white mage," Leet pointed out.

"It's like you're trying not to relate to anyone," the girl said.

Danny listened to them bantering, glad to see a chemistry forming. The team was really starting to gel, and he had some plans forming for them. But he also had a growing misgiving that he shoved down. At least the swirl of second-guesses and self-doubts was gone, he wasn't sure he could deal with that sort of distraction right now. Because he was already keeping secrets from his new team; he had been deliberately steering them around certain areas so they wouldn't see some of the shelters that had been broken open. There were a lot of them.

Some showed where Crawler's viscous saliva had eaten through the doors. Others looked like they'd been opened from the inside, either by a teleporter or a citizen tricked by one of the doppelgangers. At least one had the massive concrete walls shattered like glass, clearly a Shatterbird variation. A few had been rent open by massive claws, which he had to guess came from a Genesis clone. And some were so messed up that he knew it had to be that Ravager clone that could erode nonliving materials. Each of the shelters held anywhere from a couple hundred to several thousand citizens. And he had to fight himself not to start estimating the death toll for this day. And that without even knowing what was happening inside of the sealed shelters. For all he knew, there were only a few hundred survivors left in the city. And it was a hard pill to swallow, after having done so well against Leviathan. He had to hold it together for the time being. He began to regret not wearing a mask today, it was hard to keep his expression clear for Dinah.

* * *

"Let this be a lesson," Danny said. "If you've got a team of villains in your city and the precog says that anyone who investigates them is likely to die, then the right answer is not to walk away and hope the problem solves itself."

"Oh, shut up," Dauntless said, raising a hand to trigger his comm unit. "PRT headquarters, this is Dauntless. Voiceprint. I am now sounding the all-clear for this current Class-S event. Release the survivors and begin damage assessment. Be alert for remaining traps, and surviving hostiles. Be aware also that there is at least one Class-S entity remaining in the city, but our precognitive states that it will not present a danger for the next couple of weeks, and will not be found until after the all-clear is sounded."

The PRT officer manning the station returned with a terse acknowledgement, and a few seconds later the streetlights stopped flashing, and the sirens started again, signaling the all-clear. And around the city, shelter doors started opening, releasing the hungry, tired, terrified, frustrated citizens from their containment. The largest shelters had a hero standing at the entrance to welcome the people back to freedom, it had been shown to reduce the incidence of violence or depression on exiting. It helped people to see one of the winning heroes standing in the street waiting for them when they finally came back out into the open, and saw the mess that had been made of their city.

Danny was wearing his mask again, carried to him by one of Armsmaster's drones. No armor, no cloak, no Druid, just the return of the Wharf Rat. He stood as the door grated open, the massive slab lifting up away from the ground to disengage the locks before it slid sideways. The early-morning sun slanted in through the gap, and he saw the first row of people stepping out into the light. They appeared first as shoes, then legs, then shirts, then squinting faces hiding behind lifted hands, blinking in the unaccustomed glare. They were unshowered, unshaven, and clearly they had a couple of very rough days.

"It's safe now," Danny said, waving them out. "Sorry it took so long, this was a bad one. Come on out, please return to your homes. If you work in utilities or public services, you are asked to return to work as soon as feasible. Sorry it took so long. Please step out and return to your homes, I need to check on any sick or wounded. Come on out, it's safe now, please return to your homes. Sir, are you all right? Okay, thank you. Come on out, it's safe now, please return to your homes."

After the first rush had been cleared out, he moved in to tend to the ones that needed medical treatment. All he could do was count them up and guess at their injuries and report in to the PRT to let them know. The most common cases were existing medical conditions that had gone untreated for over forty-eight hours. After that were those who were suffering malnutrition, most of whom already had a metabolic or insulin disorder. There were a couple dozen injuries from slips and falls, and a few more injuries from some fights that had broken out. Danny reported these meticulously, calmly.

And his rats had a spare comm set and they listened in as Miss Militia reported a full loss, thousands dead. Armsmaster reported in that a Trickster had plagued that shelter for days, picking off one or two people at a time; the hysteria had killed as many as the monster. Vista was just sobbing, she had not even said what she had seen. The death toll was clearly well above a hundred thousand souls, and maybe several times that many. It was getting hard to estimate, the numbers just got big enough that his brain was flinching away from the realities.

And the boiling, roiling self-doubts were back. The what-ifs, the why-did-yous. He was second-guessing every move he had made. He cringed inwardly as he remembered how he had talked to Dauntless. How he had talked to Armsmaster. How he had talked to _Taylor_. How quickly he had turned his back on the Protectorate to surround himself with rogues and villains who obeyed him without question. But most of all, he was sure that none of this would have happened if he had not chased Piggot out of her position. Glenn was not as hateful as her, but she would not have left the Traveler issue to fester for weeks until this happened. He was growing ever more sure that what had happened here was his own fault, his apparent successes still contributing to major disasters.

But that was not the thing that had him the most concerned: he had nearly gotten the best of Jack Slash in a debate about morals. His files showed him to be a gifted manipulator, he would need to be to collect such dangerous villains to himself and keep them focused on a goal. Only Jack Slash could have kept Siberian and Crawler on a team together, or Mannequin and Bonesaw. And apparently only the Wharf Rat was able to turn them against each other. It was a heady and heavy subject: the implications that he could be nearly as gifted a manipulator as Jack Slash were a little terrifying to him. Not only because it hinted at a callous ability to use people for his own goals, but that it undermined everything he'd ever thought about his own ideals.

Most people got their sense of right and wrong from people around them. Danny knew he was no different. He knew that his sense of right and wrong did not correspond to everyone's, but if he had a chance to explain himself people tended to agree with him. He had been assuming that just meant that he was a bit complicated, but still morally correct. But what if he wasn't right? What if he was just good at convincing people that he was right? He could make all the heartless, unilateral decisions and anyone that could have corrected him would come to believe that he was right. He could be shortsighted, over-emotional, even cruel, and nobody would keep him in check. They would just support him as he turned into everything he hated. Not because they should believe in him, but because he made them believe in him.

He had to re-evaluate everything. His differences with Piggot, his conflicts with Armsmaster. He had to do some soul-searching, and he needed to ask himself whether he was really, really sure about his path. At the beginning, he had stalked a young gangster to prevent a robbery of the Union funds, and wound up mauling Lung. After that he had taken down the ABB because he could, not because he needed to. He had taken over the Docks because he felt like he had to, but holding that territory had put him into conflicts with the Merchants, the Empire, the Undersiders. He had been high-handed and demanding when he dealt the the Protectorate, and lashed out at anyone that had told him no. He had become very frustrated with Director Piggot, even though he knew that she was trying to do her job, because she wasn't doing it the way he wanted. He had pushed her to the breaking point and then exploited that to get her fired and replaced with someone more malleable. He had done a lot of things that were questionable, and a lot of things that were sketchy as hell. And he had rarely stopped to wonder if it was the right thing. He had been so certain, and he had been so persuasive, that he could have done anything and justified it. His certainty, his conviction, were dangerous.

And he already missed it. Second-guessing and soul-searching sucked. He already wished there was some crisis to distract himself so he could just fall back into that easy confidence and let it drive him. It was almost addictive.

No, he realized, not _almost_.

He listed off the injuries to the dispatcher, and then sat down with an old lady and held her hand while they waited for an ambulance to arrive and bring her insulin. He looked around the room. How long had it been since he had really looked at people? Not capes, but people. He had seen crowds of them, but he had stopped watching the faces. He saw through the eyes of a million rats spread through the city, he could see people walking back to their homes. He could see their shell-shocked expressions. He saw a teenage girl not dressed for the weather, he watched the face of a man who was trying to find out which shelter his family had gone to. He had spent weeks fighting for the city, fighting against enemies and criminals and corruption. But today he sat still, and he watched, and he immersed himself in the people. He needed to know that what he was doing came from a place of compassion.

* * *

"Yes, I'm sure," Tattletale snapped.

"I just really expected it to be something like the basement of the Protectorate tower, that sort of 'last place you'd ever look' sort of thing," Danny said.

"And that would be more of a 'place you stumble across by accident' sort of thing," she rebutted. "Look, from the placement of the six Noelles, we know that they stopped to talk to each other and form a plan and that they were on the east side of downtown when they did. So the one chosen to stay in the city would have started looking for a place to hide. That happened within two blocks of where you are now. And this is the only ratproof container within six blocks that hasn't already been checked out."

"She's sure," Dauntless reiterated. "Look, let's do this so we can put this whole thing to bed. I'm tired of wondering if another Noelle is going to pop up and kill another ninety-thousand people."

Danny shuddered at the number. It was turning into a Pavlovian response, his stomach dropped out every time he heard about it. A huge fraction of the city's populace was dead, entire families slaughtered inside the bunkers built to keep them safe. And he knew that the bunkers were only an illusion of safety, the only way to really work was to find the problems and stop them before they start. Like this mission to destroy the last trace of the Lamia. He felt a surge of certitude and righteous purpose, and he shoved it away. He clung to his doubts.

The assembled parahumans hauled the wreckage away. On the street level it was a fancy Malaysian fusion restaurant, or what was left of it. Browbeat and Manpower were hauling support beams out of the way, Oni Lee and Battery were shoving the furniture out. Trainwreck had taken a table and was using it to scrape broken bricks and fixtures away like it was a push-broom.

"Over here," Armsmaster said. He indicated a stairway leading downwards. His armor had been modified again, it was more globular than before and the arms were jointed differently to keep them closer to the body, making it look like the hero was either shyly holding his hands or defiantly crossing his arms.

"A walk-in refrigerator for a large restaurant, plenty of space, external ventilation, climate sealed, under a trashed restaurant near a center of major casualties," Uber pointed out. "This would have been one of the last places rebuilt, one of the last places investigated. It's a pretty good hiding spot."

Dauntless nodded. "Okay, we never caught the original Hatchet Face, so there could be himself or clones of his in there. We'll be leading with tinkers and long-distance powers until we've got that cleared, and then move in with the rest of the assault team."

They cleared debris and wreckage from the sunken stairwell, and then Trainwreck plowed through the door all in a rush, with Armsmaster right behind him and a flood of rats pouring through. The scene was a frozen tableau: the mutants and monsters stared at the doorway with their mouths open, clearly caught entirely by surprise. There were barrels lining the walls, and shelves of preserved foods shoved against the back wall. Only a few people were inside and alive, and half of them were strapped down to tables. A limbless Hatchet Face was accompanied by a mutant version of the same, holding a giant cleaver as he took his first lumbering step towards the invading heroes. Trainwreck swung an arm out sideways and caved in the mutant's head almost carelessly. The next table held a gruesome, bloody mess, with a broken deformed corpse stuffed underneath it. A small disfigured body was strapped to the last table, sealed up in containment foam, and then there was a single Noelle, sitting surprised on a simple stainless-steel chair at the far side of the room.

"Don't move!" Armsmaster ordered, bearing down on her with four retractable arms extended towards her, glowing weapons charged up and ready to fire.

"I suppose not," the girl with the eldritch-horror legs said. There were thick bands of tendon and gristle binding her legs together, and her feet were entirely lost to the mass of mouths and tongues and eyes and thorns that extended from her flesh.

"The fuck happened here?" Trainwreck asked, staring at the second table.

"Mouse Protector," Noelle sighed. "It turned out that she was the reason that the Nine came to Brockton. I had her here, captive with Hatchet Face, and I didn't realize that a Ravager clone was one of my bodyguards. Apparently he hated her more than he was loyal to me. He killed her. And so Hatchet Face killed him. And we were ready to smell both those rotting corpses for the next three weeks. Looks like we'll be dying instead."

Danny moved his rats around to see, and the mutilated corpse on the second table was indeed wearing blood-spattered armor. There was a familiar sword lying alongside it. He started taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly, counting to ten, then twenty.

"Who's this?" Armsmaster demanded, gesturing towards the third table.

"No name, no memories," Noelle said, shrugging. "Found him hanging out in the bad part of the Docks with the crackheads and the hoboes. But he's a powerhouse, I was going to clone up a hundred of him and turn them loose like a wrecking crew, bulldoze the city. But only after I sent a bunch of Hatchet Faces to assassinate you all. Guess that's not going to happen," she said, sounding oddly wistful.

"We got all the others, this ends with you," Armsmaster said, readying his weapons.

"All eight of them?" she said, her eyes open wide.

Danny touched his comms. "She's lying, bluffing to get you to capture her for information."

"Nice try," Armsmaster said.

"Worth a shot," she said, smiling, and then she was disintegrated into smoke and vapor.

The two tinkers came trudging up the steps after they killed both of the Hatchet Faces. A PRT team moved in to clear the area and dissolve the containment foam to release the last prisoner. Danny walked down with them, his heart heavy and his extremities gone numb. He walked downstairs, paused by the second table. There was nothing there to recognize as a person. It felt wrong to say his goodbyes to a hundred pounds of ground meat and shredded entrails and chips of bone. He stood over them anyway, and told them goodbye, and thanked them for their help and their sacrifice, and apologized for being too late to help.

Then he picked up the sword from her side and carried it back upstairs.

Panacea was working with the captive they had freed. It was a gruesome little goblin, looked like Peter Jackson's version of Gollum, or whatever that thing's name was. It was short and spindly, with an out-sized head and wrinkled, decrepit skin. And it had a Cauldron mark branded into its calf. She had her hands on the captive's arm, while it eagerly poured a bottle of water down its scrawny gullet.

The girl and the goblin murmured back and forth, Danny just absently stared on as he held the sword in his hand, rocking its weight back and forth. PRT uniforms traveled back and forth around him, in front of him, as they went to decontaminate the walk-in cooler. He did not even notice when she cleaned up the small man, removing the off-putting deformities. Danny came back from his thoughts and saw a whole new man, still small but less wizened, with a broad honest face and a slightly-crooked nose to add some character. His wispy dark hair was replaced by a dark blonde buzz cut, and his body under the EMT blanket seemed to be better proportioned.

Dauntless appeared at his elbow. "They're disbanding us, you know."

"I'm sorry, what?" Danny said, pulling himself out of his daze.

"The Brockton Bay branch of the Protectorate is being disbanded," the team leader said, his tone impossible to read. He stared out at the PRT uniforms, not even looking at Danny. "We're all being retasked to different cities. I'm going to Santa Fe, my assignment's in already. The Tower's been condemned, too much structural damage and exposure. Even the Wards are being shipped away. The official communication from headquarters states that the Protectorate's presence in Brockton Bay has become redundant. I think you can read between the lines, yes?"

"Did they say where I am retasked to?" Danny asked delicately.

"You know, it's funny," Dauntless said, still not looking his way. "They didn't say. They're getting rid of this posting, but they didn't seem to reassign you at all. I think the assumption is that you will quit the Protectorate before the closure here is final."

"And they expect me to take care of the whole city by myself," Danny filled in.

"You've already got a good-sized team working with you," Dauntless said, nodding towards the side of the road. Uber, Leet, Circus, Trainwreck, Oni Lee, Panacea and Parian were all close by, their line of sight scanning past him every so often to see if he had something to say to them. Dinah Alcott was at home with her parents, but it seemed odd not to have her lined up with the others. "And you've made it more than clear that we were just in your way."

"I'm sorry if I ever made you feel that way," Danny said. "In the heat of the moment, I... I'm an insensitive ass. I get caught up in myself and I stop thinking about what people are going to hear."

Dauntless stiffened, then relaxed. "Thank you. That helps me some. But it doesn't change the facts. You and your way of doing things cannot exist within the Protectorate. And the Protectorate can't share a city with you. And, if either your group or ours has to move, it's going to be ours. That's just the way things are. I don't think any of us ever really had a choice in the matter, no matter what it seemed like at the time."

Danny sighed deeply, and he felt five years older than he had a minute before. "Damn. This isn't what I wanted. Maybe they'll let me apologize, I can promise them I'll be a better team player, I can abide by their rules like everyone else. I've been thinking about this a lot and-"

"This isn't about _you_ ," Dauntless said. "Jesus, man, we've been having problems for a while. Sure, you didn't help, but that doesn't mean it's all your fault. Right now half my team can't even stand to be in the same room as each other. They won't talk about it, but apparently being trapped with someone's evil clone makes it impossible to ever really trust them again. Armsmaster is getting shipped off to Dragon's production facility to work on power suits full time, taking Kid Win with him. Vista is going to be in counseling full-time for a while. Browbeat is quitting, Velocity requested an administrative position. Gallant is joining New Wave to be with his girlfriend, Flechette is transferring back to New York but has already vowed to never fight the Endbringers again. If we stayed, it would be me and Aegis and Clockblocker and a ruined tower, sharing a city with your motley crew of misfits and New Wave, with no trust from the public, no support from the government, and no villains to deal with because you already beat them all. So no, the Protectorate is disbanding this posting no matter what you do. Look, just... make the most of it, okay? You've got good ideas, so put those into play now that there's nobody in your way."

"Wait a minute," Danny blurted out. "Taylor? Taylor's staying, right?"

Dauntless looked away again. "Her position as a Ward was a matter of convenience, to accommodate her living near you while you were a member of the Protectorate. Without you, there's no reason to keep her on board. Officially she's retiring, we'll be repossessing her armor and the trinkets that make it work. She can go back to being your daughter full time. But your daughter has walked through hallways filled with men and women you've killed. Things won't be the same for you two."

Danny cursed under his breath, and looked away from the other man. "Tell me there's some good news."

"You're not going to have to answer to us or follow our rules," the hero said. "Isn't that good news? The Protectorate is not going to hand you orders, they'll just stand by and wait for your call to pick up a prisoner. You get the city to yourself to do whatever you want, just like you always wanted."

"Okay, well one last thing before you go?"

"Yeah?" Dauntless asked, looking up at him.

"Talk to your superiors, move a memo up the chain of command. Get a dedicated team of heroes to train for Endbringer attacks, some people specially chosen to be effective in those fights, to support Eidolon and Scion. It makes more sense to do that, rather than just scramble for an army of unprepared capes every time an Endbringer arrives."

"Yeah," Dauntless said, nodding. "Yeah, that makes sense." He started to turn away.

"I'm sorry we never got to be friends," Danny said. Dauntless did not pause again.

The swirl of was-that-right and am-I-wrong was joined with a strong sense of dread, and doom, and a leaden sensation of guilt.

* * *

"Well, despite Dauntless's doomsaying, there actually is good news," Leet said, leaning forward to plant his elbows on the tabletop. "The city qualifies for even more FEMA assistance than the Leviathan attack, so there should be plenty of repairs happening, and soon. We've had almost no looting, rioting, or surges in crime at all. We've launched a dozen charities to support the families of Brockton Bay casualties, and people are donating money from around the country to help the survivors who have lost family. Housing prices have dropped, jobs are on the rise, and we're getting a fair amount of people moving into the city to replace those who died. And, our game has already gone platinum many times over, so Uber and I are now billionaires. I am now accepting applications for lackeys."

Danny nodded. "I've been keeping the harbor clear. I've basically eliminated all smuggling in the city. The customs office has built a mouse-sized pet door for me. Most of the police precincts now have a pet mouse in a terrarium that has a keyboard to type messages to them directly. I've chased out the loan sharks and other opportunists. But I'm concerned about this new FEMA money, there tends to be large sums moving around and not enough oversight. Seems like the sort of thing our mayor may use to enrich himself at the city's expense."

Oni Lee leaned forward, his eyes moving slowly side to side before he spoke briefly, haltingly. "Stop him?" Panacea patted him on the hand, smiling encouragingly.

"Well, there's lots of ways," Danny said, speaking towards Oni Lee. "We could threaten him and drive him out of the city, but that looks bad on us, looks bad for the city, and doesn't necessarily fix the problem. We could just find the evidence of his crooked deals and run it past the authorities and use our leverage and influence to get them to do the right thing. Or we could just go to his office and ask him to play straight instead of double-dealing like usual. Maybe he can be inspired to be a good mayor instead of a profiteering scumbag."

"That's the kind of outside-the-box thinking that beat Leviathan and blew up the Boardwalk," Uber chuckled. "I like the idea, but I'm not holding my breath. So, are we officially inducting a new member?"

All eyes turned to the far end of the table, where the small man sat staring their way. The man was a midget, about four and a half feet tall, but he had filled out a little with muscle since he had been discovered. His face was charming enough, but he was so consistently uncomfortable that it was a bit hard to talk to him directly. "If you guys will have me, I'd love to help you," he said. "I think I can especially help you out with current problems. My specialty is cleaning up wreckage and trash."

Panacea beamed. "I think I speak for all of us when I say we'll be happy to have you onboard. It's been a couple weeks, have you picked names for yourself yet?"

"I was thinking I like the sound of Josh Murray, but I also like the name Salvage," said the small man. In an alternate timeline, one in which things went differently, he may have remained a stunted and deformed little dwarf. He may have been picked up by the Fifth Street Merchants, were they still a thing, and Skidmark may have affixed him with the name of 'Mush'.

"Salvage," Parian said, rolling it over her tongue. "It's good. I've seen what you do, and it works for you."

"And it reminds me not to forget what you guys did for me," Salvage said.

"If this is a good time to do this," Parian said, "I'd like to change up my name too. I need to put some things behind me, and it's hard. My family has disowned me, nobody from my old life will talk to me. I need to embrace these changes, I need to make my identity about myself, and not about what I used to be. So I've picked a new name that takes strength from the people who rejected me. I am going to call myself Pariah."

"Kinda dark," Trainwreck said. "I like it." And Panacea sat back in her seat, looking thoughtful, her jaw shifting side to side as she considered.

"Speaking of dark," the newly-named Pariah said, "I've been talking to our esteemed leader about uniforms. I've not got everything worked out yet, but I can tell you that we're going with a basic black." Circus nodded approvingly, picking at the sleeve of her green-and-white motley. She had switched out masks, leaving behind the manically-smiling faceplate for a smooth oval with eyeholes.

"But I want to know if it's a great idea to reveal the location of our headquarters?" Uber said, looking around the room. "The Protectorate Tower sure was a great landmark, but it was also a great big target. The New Wave operates out of their own houses and have public identities, I'm seriously surprised that they've survived this long. So we should be going the other direction, right? We ought to keep our operations secret as much as possible."

Danny shook his head. "I get it, I do. But the city's confidence is shaken. They got hurt, a lot. Lots of people died. The Protectorate abandoned them. If we don't step up, visibly, then they're going to feel scared and vulnerable. They'll have a hard time being confident in us. They won't cooperate with us. We could lose all the public trust we've built on a winning record, if we go underground right now."

Gambler leaned forward, folded her hands on the table. "It's true. Like, every prediction I throw out gets worse if we go all secretive. Everything we do gets harder. I really tried to find a way to make your plan work, Uber, but it just doesn't."

The big man slouched back in his seat. "Damn," he sighed. He looked around the room. The walls were gray and plain but hardly level, they bulged with warts and grooves on all sides, shot through with rusted steel bands that wove in and out through the concrete at odd angles. It was a tremendously ugly construction style, completely at odds with the smooth businesslike table they all sat at. "Well, if this is where we work, then how long until it's ready?"

Trainwreck stretched his arms over his head. "I've been working eighteen-hour days, but most of the visible work gets done all at once. I know that right now all you see is me moving rocks from one pile to another. But when this thing comes together, it's gonna be something else. Gimme about three more days. And keep in mind that a job like this normally takes a contractor nearly a year to complete. Nobody works as fast or as cheap as I do."

"And once we've got the factory assembled, we can start working on the assemblers," Leet said. "Unfortunately, I won't be able to work on them. They're actual science, and my inventions are more like sufficiently-advanced magic."

"So, that's my job," Uber said. "Uber, design a factory. Uber, build the robots that are going to work in the factory. Uber, do everything!"

Salvage frowned, his forehead creasing. "Hang on, I thought he was the genius inventor," he said, pointing at Leet.

"Nah," Leet said. "It'd be nice, but it's not the way. Tinker talents aren't just being smart. It's the ability to make something technological, usually very technological, without meeting the usual requirements of knowledge, physics or materials. Trainwreck can make stuff despite not having the materials, he makes scrap iron act like space-age polymers and room-temperature superconductors, and makes steam act like carbon plasma in a Klein bottle. Squealer could do her stuff because the knowledge was just given to her, it's basically like thirty-first century technology but it's all real science that she shouldn't know. And then there's me: I can do stuff that physics itself says I shouldn't be able to do. That's part of why my power pushes back so hard against what I do, I can't make the same thing twice, or even very close. I just try to do stuff and it works or it fails, and any resemblance to actual science or invention is just to help me focus while I trick physics into looking the other way. Armsmaster had a little bit like me and a little bit like Squealer, he was given knowledge with a specific focus, and also he can bend physics in some specific ways to help him. Like the minimum insulation needed to keep an electrical circuit intact, or basic friction and entropy. He just messes them up in his presence so that he can make impossible inventions. And then there's Uber: the man who can be an expert in anything. Despite the fact that we've got two tinkers on the team, Uber's the only one who can actually do real science."

"Though he's gonna have a lot of help from me," Trainwreck interjected. "He designs the robots and programs them, but I can slam together a machine shop in an afternoon that can actually make the parts for him. But the stuff I make breaks down fast. But, if I make something that makes something else... well, as long as it's real science and not tinker-tech, we're good to go."

"And that's partly where things get tough," Uber said. "See, I'm not just turning into an expert in robotics and building the robots, I'm also incorporating some tinker tech and hoping that I can get the part that's advanced science and not the part that's tricking physics into looking the other way."

Taylor leaned forward abruptly. "Wait, what tinker tech are you incorporating?" Her tone was harsh and confrontational, and Danny sighed.

"Armsmaster," Uber said. "And some from Squealer. Possibly some from Mannequin, but probably not."

Taylor's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Armsmaster moved everything out of his workshop days ago. How did you get access?"

"Physics wasn't paying attention when I invented a camera the photographs the past," Leet grinned. "So, I got his plans. And the flash I use makes sure that nobody else can ever do the same thing, so the plans are totally confidential now."

"You're stealing his work!"

"Look, Taylor," her father said, his voice tired, "he was my friend, even more than he was your friend. But the tech he developed in that lab can help a lot of people. And the jobs it produces will help the whole city."

"You're just stealing your friend's work," she objected. "Grabbing anything that isn't nailed down. Picking over the Protectorate's bones. Your team of scavengers has poisoned the best parts of you, Dad." She stood up and stormed out.

Panacea winced. "That hurt to watch."

"Hurt to hear it, too," Danny said, rubbing at his temples.

"She's pissed at you," Pariah said. "She's been asking you to slow down for a long time, and you're just pulling away. She's probably never going to get used to thinking about how many of those clones you killed, and she thinks of them as people. And now you're working with rogues and villains and the heroes all gave up and left."

"Sure, that's probably it," Danny said, staring at the door his daughter had slammed shut. _And part of it is that in her mind this is our thing, hers and mine. She was there at the beginning, talking to me on the phone while I rode my bike and patrolled the neighborhood. She designed my costumes, she helped me figure out my route. She covered for me, and she gave up afternoons with me so that I could be a hero. And now, there's all this. There's big plans, big pictures, secrets and teams and conspiracies and no time for Taylor, no room for a daughter. So much to get caught up in, and so much that seems so important. And it feels like I've just walked away from her, like I've forgotten when this was our special thing, our secret together._ He pushed his chair back and stood up. "Look, guys, thanks for helping with all of this. Thanks for everything. You're all going so far above and beyond what I could ask of you. But I think I need a few days with my daughter. I'm going to have my earpiece in so you can call me, but... this is family."

Trainwreck looked over at Salvage, then up at the Wharf Rat. "Boss, speaking as someone who doesn't even know if he has a family, I understand. Take care of your girl, then come back to us." Panacea nodded, and Pariah too. This was a room that understood how important family was. Oni Lee and Circus nodded, and Dinah shooed him with her hands, urging him towards the door.


	18. Chapter 18

_Author's note: Some reviews have made clear that I did not do a good job explaining something several chapters ago. To clarify: Danny had a second trigger event in Chapter Nine, while he was arguing with Director Piggot about her undoing his entire life's work because of her disdain for him. It is in fact similar to canon Skitter's ability to manipulate parahumans and her unerring tactical sense, though in Danny's case the tactical application is partly about social engineering as well as some combat applications. I intend to go back to chapter nine and clarify this better, over the weekend. Sorry for the issue._

"You think that it's dangerous to be confident?" Taylor said, taking her eye off the road to look over at him with an eyebrow raised.

"Well, it's not just as simple as that," Danny said. "Careful of that broken glass, don't want a flat tire. It's more like sometimes, I get so sure of myself that I stop thinking about why I'm so sure of myself. If I start making bad decisions, catastrophically bad decisions, I won't even know it. Even if someone tries to tell me. Heck, I've been able to talk people into things, so if they try to talk sense into me, I could just drag them into my mistakes."

"But you think that I might help?" she prompted. The wind lifted the long black hair off of her shoulders, branches rustling all above them. It was cooling and comfortable, but as tired as both their legs were it was just another obstacle that made their complaining muscles protest louder. The city's roads were far from fixed up. Leviathan had done a lot of damage, and it was only partly repaired. Lamia's mutants had done a lot of destruction of their own. But the city had at least managed to lay out planks and platforms at the intersections. It was enough for cars to cross slowly, trucks to cross carefully, and bikes to cross easily. Large numbers of citizens had already sold their cars out of town and were commuting by bike full-time.

Danny looked both ways before crossing, with Taylor right at his side. "You shook me out of it before, for a few seconds. I think that if you were aware of it, you'd be able to keep me on an even keel. I don't think I ever really had destructive or self-destructive tendencies before, but maybe I have them now. God knows, a lot of what I've accomplished, that seemed like such a great idea at the time, has looked pretty bad in retrospect."

"You killed Leviathan," she reminded him. They went silent a few seconds as a twenty-something barista passed them up.

"I did _help_ kill Leviathan," he admitted. "And that one seems like a great victory, but maybe if I hadn't he would have killed Lamia. He was heading west, and she was in the west side of the city. And when I did help kill him, it blew up a good-sized piece of the city, that wasn't great either. I'm lucky that it wasn't a black hole or something that destroyed the earth, I had Tattletale telling me that it was a mysterious creature with a core that defied normal physics, and I told Flechette and Alexandria to stab it in the physics-breaking heart with a physics-breaking steel beam. That's just about the most reckless thing anyone could have ever done. And there's other possibilities, other stuff that may be going wrong because of it. Look, I'm not saying to stop me from doing anything at all. I'm just saying that I need someone to keep an eye on me when I stop acting like myself. And I need it to be someone who is really, really important to me."

"You're just saying that because you're my father."

"No. I love you because I'm your father. I trust you and respect you because I have spent enough time around you to know you well."

"Pull over," Taylor said. "We need a hug."

* * *

The city was bustling in some districts, but others looked like a photograph. In the middle of the day the Docks area was almost surreally still once one was away from the harbor district. Businesses here were having a hard time, and the residents were all at work. Any children enjoying their summer vacation still were doing it safely indoors. With no wind and no clouds, everything was so utterly still that it felt dreamlike. It gave him an impression of the city itself, without the people, without things happening or sounds to distract; just the city itself, the buildings and the place. The way the architecture changed from block to block, showed how different classes and different time periods affected the design of the city. It was rather like the way that tree rings could show a good year or a drought year.

"You're quiet," Taylor pointed out.

"I'm giving Trainwreck instructions on how to make the factory most convenient to the waterline. And I'm watching Circus training Salvage and making sure she doesn't go too far. And I'm keeping an eye on Uber while he works his blueprints. And the rest of the city. I'm being briefed on crimes reported to the police and sniffing around for evidence at the same time. I'm chewing through a fuel line to keep a kidnapper from escaping before the cops arrive. I'm bringing a contingent of harvest mice to Panacea so she can turn them into repeaters so I can watch the countryside at the edge of the city itself. I'm leading some homeless families to an easy meal. And I'm enjoying a quiet afternoon with my daughter, just enjoying the view. I don't really look at the city much, you know? The last several weeks I was in the Druid armor, and the augmented-reality faceplate was informative but it has no atmosphere. The last several days I've been tied up by the Lamia situation and the evacuation of the Protectorate. Before all of that I was just adjusting to my powers. I haven't, just, y'know, eased up and just enjoyed an afternoon in a while."

"It sounds like you're really, really bad at taking it easy," Taylor pointed out. "You're doing a hundred Wharf Rat things at the same time, and you think that's chilling out."

He shrugged. "Matter of perspective. This whole 'infinite multitask' thing is a real game changer. Early on it was weird and distracting. But once you've learned how to see through a hundred sets of eyes, a million eyes, it's hard to be just a person. Sometimes I have to let all of that stuff be... someone else, something else. Kind of like putting it on autopilot, except that it's... well, not that at all. But sometimes I have to just put that stuff in one place, and put myself in another place, and just act like Danny for a while, even if I can't switch off all the rats, all the mice."

"We could just do this all the time," she pointed out. "You could just let the Wharf Rat be this thing that happens in the city, while Danny Hebert is just here hanging out with me. We could get another house just like the last one, and have each other full-time. I mean, you've got rats everywhere to see everything. You've got hologram projectors and hologram overrides. You've got consoles that let you send phone calls or comm signals using your own voice, operated by mice at tiny keyboards. If you do it right, nobody would ever know you were away. You drop by every so often to keep Oni Lee company, and the rest of the time you're a voice on the phone, watching everything and always helping."

"Like Charlie and his angels," Danny chuckled. "I have to admit, it's awfully tempting. And probably feasible. We might get to try something like that soon."

Taylor made a face. "This is the part I'm going to hate, you've already got an excuse for why you've got to be there yourself, doing all that stuff. I'm not sure there's anything more condescending than a well-rehearsed 'yes but'."

"I assure you there is plenty more condescending than that," Danny said, grinning wryly. "But the last several times I've been in trouble, or the city was in trouble, it was because I got blindsided. When I was working with the Protectorate, I got pulled into their way of doing things, their rhythm and pace. And it's defensive. I was sitting back and waiting for things to go wrong. And you can't stop things from going wrong like that. That's not helping people, that's just damage control. And I need to stop that happening. I need to get back to the system that worked for me. Back when I was riding around and investigating, things went well for me. I took down Lung and the ABB, made it look easy. I dismantled half of the Empire Eighty-Eight. And I did it proactively. Things started going wrong for me when I fought Butcher. When I let the Travelers slip away because PRT policy said to wait them out. When I started public patrols to make public appearances. Hell, I managed to find a way to be proactive against Leviathan, and that turned out better than anyone expected."

Taylor tied her hair back, getting the curls up off the back of her neck. It was a warm day, and the weight of it on her skin was just enough to start her sweating, even sitting astride their bikes in the shade. "Okay, so you want to take bad guys down before they come after you. I get that. So, how does that keep you from just chilling at home and sipping a beer while the Wharf Rat does his thing?"

"Well, at this point there aren't any real threats to the city, inside the city," he said, his tone guarded.

She turned to face him incredulously. "Wait, you want to go out of Brockton Bay to go find more bad guys to pummel? You've solved all the local problems so you want to go find other trouble to solve? What the hell, dad?"

He sighed and leaned his elbows on the handlebars, his arms crossed. "I wouldn't have put it that way, but you're not wrong. Now, I'm not going to say that I don't have my doubts. I've got plenty. But I know that people are going to be coming after us. This is a port city with no smuggling, so every cartel and dealer is going to think they need to come here to set up a smuggling operation. We've got underground casinos that don't pay protection money, so every strong-arm and capo is going to think they need to come here and demand protection money. There's no villains anymore, so every villain is thinking that there's no competition, and no heroes. I'm watching everything, all the time, to make sure that there's no villains moving in and setting up shop. And they're going to hurt people here, unless I stop them before they even get to the city."

"Not crazy about it," Taylor said.

Both of them stopped talking as they watched a single cyclist ride past. The young woman wheeled down the sidewalk, feet pumping steadily. She wore blue jeans and a white blouse, her loose black hair bobbing off her shoulders as she rode. She passed within feet of them, without sparing either of them a glance. It seemed even more surreal and liminal than the utter stillness of the street before she arrived. She crossed them and then rode away, disappearing down the block and vanishing into the distance.

Danny spent the time thinking about his next words. "I was really ready to call this a retirement and just keep an eye on the city, and phone the PRT every time the villains turn up and let them know where to go to make the arrest. But I know there's going to be more threats. And soon. Brockton is cursed or something, or maybe just us. Or just me, I don't know. But we're not done. I'd like to be done. But Gambler is pretty clear that there's more danger on the way. I can either get ahead of it, or fall behind it."

Taylor did not move, just stared across the street as if she was memorizing the pawn shop's frontage. "Shit," she finally said.

"Yeah."

She sat up straight, one foot on the ground and one on the pedals. "How many more times, dad? How many more of these are we going to do?"

"Between four and eight," he said. "Depending on how things go, or on what you define as a battle. Less if we lose, but if we lose it.. goes badly."

"Obviously," she said, and sighed. "You and your darn cryptic precognitive. I know that girl would give clearer answers if she could, but it doesn't keep me from getting annoyed with the whole thing. Though I suppose it's tons better than not having any precognitive at all. Still, four sounds... good. And eight sounds manageable. As long as they're not all like the Lamia Slaughterhouse debacle."

Danny straightened, and turned the handlebars. "I can promise you easily that I'll do everything in my power to keep that from happening again. C'mon, let's get some sandwiches while we talk this out."

The put up their kickstands and rode for a bit. The warmth of the ride brought sweat to their skin, but the slight breeze evaporated it away. Crossing from the Docks to downtown, they had to pause for a break in car traffic before they could ride across. The growth rings of a tree, from drought to thriving.

"Say, dad, I meant to ask, now that the PRT isn't paying you a paycheck anymore, what are you doing for sandwich money?" she asked.

He paused before he answered. "Well, for time being I'm paid as an employee advocate for Leet and Uber's new factory. I'm liaising between them and the Dockworkers Association. It's aboveboard work, taxes paid and everything, so I can slip back into a secret identity for a while. I think that the guys thought this was going to be just some cushy title for a free paycheck that wouldn't bother me or distract me, but I think they've underestimated how seriously I take the union."

* * *

Danny was wearing his best suit. It was a new one, befitting his new paycheck. And also befitting his new shoulders, he had put on some muscle during his time with the Protectorate. With his head shaved, his glasses missing, and a summer tan, few people would have recognized him from before his Wharf Rat days.

The mayor was one of those people. " _You_ ," he said with a deep current of venom. "I remember you. I don't forget anyone that threatens me like you threatened me."

"Indeed, your honor," Danny said, closing the door behind him. "And once again, I had to sit on a waiting list just to get ten minutes of your time. Now, you may recall that I represent the Dockworkers Association-"

The mayor dropped a hand onto his phone. "I should have you thrown out."

"I know why Rory doesn't play professional sports," Danny said. "If you get my meaning." He held up one hand, fingers and thumb curled into the shape of a C, cocked upwards so the open end looked like a spilling cup or a tilted U.

The mayor took his hand back, glaring daggers at the union representative. "Rory had moved to a college out of state, he can mind his own business."

"And I can tell Cauldron that you're the one that led me to them," he said. "You know you don't want that. I can lay out the paper trail that I followed from you to your son to their doorstep. Because there was a paper trail, you know. It took a lot of patience, but now the dots are connected. So, rather than minding Rory's business, let's discuss your business."

Mayor Christner stepped back behind his desk and sat down. His hair looked a little flatter, thinner, less leonine than before. "What about my business?"

"Right now there's a ton of cash coming in. Federal emergency funds, PRT recovery funds, charitable donations. And I just want to make sure that the money goes where it was intended. Infrastructure, public works, utility improvements, heavy industry, local jobs, things like that. Because, after the Leviathan attack, the city just sort of patched a band-aid onto the major problems, and then started issuing no-bid contracts to a short list of real estate holdings and private developers, half of which trace back to companies you sit on the board for. You skimmed every level of that recovery money, taking cuts off the top and then cuts off other people's cuts. But this is too important for your usual kickbacks and underhanded dealings." Danny crossed his ankle over his knee, and laced his fingers together as he spoke. "Mayor Christner, I know that you intend to squander the recovery money. You're going to pay your own companies at inflated rates for substandard work and pocket the difference, to repair private businesses owned by your friends and partners. And you're going to have the insurance companies you own write off the claims for the maximum amount and divert the federal funds to an insurance bailout. And then when the broken roads start to corrode further, or the next attack hits, you're going to have the city condemned and take the payouts to relocate your businesses and bury the evidence of your shady double-dealings here in Brockton Bay. That, your honor, is your business."

The mayor went very, very still. "How could you know anything at all about my business?"

"I've spent months untangling your paper trails," Danny said. _And I've had mice in your house listening in your phone calls._ "Your honor, I don't know everything about your business. But I've learned how you hide your dirty laundry, and that's what's important today. Now then, I need to know that this reconstruction project is going to go by the books. No shady deals, no sketchy contracts, no diverted funds, no bailouts in exchange for campaign contributions."

"There's already too much in the works," the mayor said. "I've made commitments, I've already started the wheels turning. It can't be backed out now."

"Unless you resign?"

"I-" the mayor blurted, then paused, the sound dying in his throat. He sank back, staring balefully at Danny. Slowly he spoke again. "If I resign, then the contracts I signed that have not been executed yet go back to the city council for review. But the council will just renew them as-is and send them back to be signed by the interim mayor. Nothing would change."

"Unless the council foreman were to resign, and the first and fourth district aldermen," Danny said. "And Judge Klein."

Mayor Christner held Danny's eyes, rock steady, and opened his desk drawer. Danny was ready for a gun, but wasn't expecting a remote control. The mayor raised it, pressed a button, and a television blared to life in the corner.

"- _surprising developments in the city council as three members were today indicted for fraud, racketeering, embezzlement, money laundering, graft, bribery, and obstruction of justice. Also under investigation is Judge Klein of the city's-_ "

"I thought they were going to resign," Mayor Christner said levelly, staring at Danny as he shut off the television.

Danny shrugged without unlacing his fingers. "They didn't resign fast enough."

* * *

Danny and Taylor stood in the crowd, eating shaved ice from the concession cart. "Three!" they yelled with the rest of the people gathered at the construction site. "Two! One!" and thousands of voices cheered together as Trainwreck pushed down a plunger that looked like an old-timey dynamite detonator. There was a second or two of a pause, then a rumble, and then the building snapped up into place behind him, rising from the ground in a second. Metal straps snapped tight, hauling debris and rubble together, forcing them together. The metal straps were woven together so that the bound concrete was forced into a specific shape, and the walls and ceiling leaped up from the ground like a special effect, a demolition in reverse. Walls five feet thick supported the ceiling, and then the interior support pillars snapped into place. The crowd cheered while a troupe of new figures marched into the open, carrying huge rusty tanks with hoses attached to sprayer nozzles. The figures wore a basic black, and carried different size tanks. One was sixteen feet tall and carried a tank the size of a bobtail truck, four of them stood eight to ten feet tall and carried tanks the size of small cars. They moved in on the building and started spraying a foam out of their tanks that splattered onto the rough walls and hardened to cement in seconds, sealing the walls. One human sized figure in black was carrying an outsized tank, the last two human-sized figures carried more reasonable equipment.

Uber and Leet traded a high five on the stage, while Trainwreck just stared at it all and looked very pleased with himself. After a minute, Uber moved back to the microphone. "All right, they're going to be sealing up the walls for a while, so let's not stand here staring. We're going to be moving in the machinery all week, and while most of our management is already hired we need hands! Hundreds of hands! So find our website, put in your application. We do on-the-job training, marketable skills you can take with you to any industry or manufacturing job. We do the work in Brockton, we keep the jobs in Brockton, we're here to help Brockton!"

The crowd cheered. He was surprisingly good at public speaking. Sure, his power could make him an expert at anything, but it was a bit surprising to see. Taylor nudged her father. "So, where'd they get the concrete?"

"Some of it's asphalt from Leviathan's attack. Some of it's from the buildings that Purity leveled when she went on her rampage. Or the Lamia Slaughterhouse. This city's been collecting rubble and debris for months, but Trainwreck built something out of it. Building materials for pennies on the dollar," Danny said. "The stuff he makes doesn't last long, but they only needed to last long enough to make one building. And now he's going to make more tinkertech stuff to build the machines that Uber designed, and since he didn't build those things himself they'll last the regular lifetime."

"You seem to know a lot about this," said a teenage boy from nearby.

"I do, yeah," Danny said, giving a smile. "I'm their liaison with the Dockworkers Association, I've been working with them for a few days. And they love to talk about their project. In fact, it was Taylor here that gave them the name they're using." He gestured at the sign on the side lawn. The sign read _Future Site of Scavenger Industries!_ , and a man in coveralls was striking out the word "future" even as they spoke.

The teenage boy nodded, looking around. "So, you know the management. Do you think you could get me a word with them?"

"From what I understand, it's hard to say a word they don't hear," Taylor pointed out.

"But, if you want a face-to-face, I'll need to know what it's about," Danny said.

"It's about joining up," the boy said. "My name's Theo Anders, and I'm a parahuman."

* * *

"I gotta confess," Trainwreck said. "I'm impressed by your powerset. Lots of utility there. But the name just doesn't speak to me."

Theo Anders looked nervous with this sort of scrutiny. "Uh, I can change the name, sure, I just wouldn't know what to change it to."

"The name's fine," Danny said.

"It's a bit lame," Taylor rebutted.

"We favor understated names around here," Danny pointed out. "Well, except for Uber and Leet, but they skate by because of the irony of it."

"Thanks," Uber said smugly, then leaned forward as he understood. "Hey!"

"So, tell us where you've been and what's been going on," Panacea said, staring at the teenage boy.

Theo took a deep breath but didn't look at any of them directly. "Okay, so after the Wharf Rat took out Crusader, my stepmother Kayden took -"

"I knew I recognized you!" Danny said, slapping the table. "You were in that apartment the day I got Crusader!"

"Yeah, I was. Anyway, the PRT kidnapped Aster-"

"A judge declared her unfit because she was a career criminal and the child was taken into the foster system," Pariah interrupted.

"Uh, yeah. Anyway, she got captured, Wharf Rat again, and so my father didn't have anyone left in Brockton to dump me with, and he put me up. And then when he and the rest of Empire left the city, they took me with them. And then my father, Kaiser, uh Max Anders, put his sister in charge of testing me to provoke my trigger event. I don't know if you guys have ever heard about Iron Rain, but -"

"Similar powers to Kaiser, except she creates spears, blades, and metal weights that drop out of the air instead of emerging from solid objects," Salvage said. "Her personality has been described as similar to her brother's, but with the brakes taken off."

"Basically," Theo said. "She's not any more sadistic or barbaric or narcissistic than him, she's just less restrained. They spent weeks drilling me to make me manifest powers. She got Fenja, Menja, even Hookwolf to help her push me to the limits. Spears falling at me, giant swords swinging at me, being chased by giant chainsaw-monsters, only pausing when I was doing pushups or sit-ups or pull-ups, and even then only briefly. It was... it was pretty bad."

"I should think so," Danny said. "You're at least forty pounds lighter than you were when you left."

"Twenty pounds, some of it came back as muscle," Theo corrected. "Anyway, I was at dinner listening to my father tell me what a failure I was and how I wasn't worth the trouble, even superpowers wouldn't make me a strong person just a strong failure... and then everything went weird and I triggered. After that, there were two of me and not just one. One of me was always invisible and immaterial, the other was solid and visible. And we could switch back and forth-"

"-any time we felt like," said Theo from the other side of the room. "It's always me, and I can see through both sets of eyes," he said, walking across the room from left to right. "But I can't disappear both of me at the same time, or appear both of me at the same time." He vanished again and the Theo in the chair reappeared. "So that was the first thing I noticed about it, and it helped me get away from Iron Rain's spears and stuff, let me dodge her attacks a lot more easily. It was a complete accident when I found out that I'd inherited a bit of my mother's size changing abilities."

He vanished, and the other Theo appeared, still walking back and forth across the room. But this time he was ten feet tall, nearly scraping his head on the ceiling. "This is nearly my biggest size, not very big as size changers go," he admitted. "Still, enough to get the edge on most noncombatants or unpowered folks. Especially with the element of surprise that I'm always going to have. Most teleporters, they need a split second to reorient themselves when they teleport, but since all I'm doing is becoming solid or intangible, there's no disorientation." He vanished and was replaced by a foot-tall Theo that stood on his chair to be seen around the table. "And, I can only change my size while I'm dematerialized. But while my maximum size caps out at about eleven feet, I don't seem to have a minimum size. I've gotten myself down small enough that I got picked up by a stray breeze like a speck of dust. I may be able to get small enough to handle atoms, I don't think it's safe to try though. There's nothing to breathe if you're smaller than an oxygen molecule." The small Theo was replaced by the pacing Theo, back to regular size. "So, that's what I've got. Do you think you've got a place for me?"

"I was sold when I found out that you ran away from a gang of white supremacists," Pariah said. "It takes guts to leave home, even an abusive home. But you hated what they were about so badly that you came to search out the guy that chased your father away, and I respect that as much as I hate what your father does."

Salvage nodded. "I'm ready to get you in just so I won't be the new guy anymore. These folks all worked together before I showed up, and it's awkward."

Uber squinted thoughtfully. "Do you know how rare it is to have actual invisibility? Much less with that walk-through-walls stuff? You're like the only guy who could possibly be a better scout than Wharf Rat. And if we get you some weapons, you'll be- oh, don't freak out, doesn't need to be anything lethal. But you're absolutely right about the advantage of surprise. You've got the goods, you've got the powers, and you've got the right attitude."

Leet nodded, and Panacea too. Gambler had already logged her vote in his favor before anyone else knew who Theo was. Circus and Oni Lee both stared at him impassively, and he seemed creeped out by them. Trainwreck shook his name. "I say again: the power's good, the kid's good, but... _Gulliver_? It's just an awful name."

"Yeah, it's a real... train wreck," Panacea grinned.

"Bite me."

"I think it's damn near the only name you can pick when your powers let you travel great distances, shrink and grow," Pariah said. "Really now, what other name covers all of that?"

"Macro-scale quantum mechanics," Uber volunteered.

"What other name that most people can pronounce?" Pariah corrected.

"Nah, the issue is that macro-scale quantum mechanics would include about a hundred powers that Theo doesn't have," Leet said.

Panacea rolled her eyes. "Let him have his literary name. For pity's sakes, it's at least easier for most people to spell and pronounce than 'panacea'."

"If we bring you on board," Danny said quietly. "You're going to work as hard as you did for Iron Rain and Kaiser. Training, drilling, working, fighting. And, we're going to make sure you get back into school when it starts-"

"Week after next," Taylor contributed.

"Shit, already?" Danny flinched. "God, time flies. Okay, week after next. Like I said, training, drilling, working out, working with us, all of that. But somehow, I think it'll be a lot easier for you here than it was working for them."

"Why is that?" Leet asked, cocking his head to the side.

"Because it wasn't the hard work and training that gave him his powers," Danny said. "The trigger event was mental, not physical. Forgive a bit of armchair psychoanalysis for a minute: Kaiser is a classical narcissist and a sociopath. He worked relentlessly to break down your confidence and keep you insecure. And then he used that insecurity to bludgeon you with. He would alternate between demanding that you be strong enough to stand up for yourself, and cutting you down to make sure you couldn't stand up for yourself. He would alternate his demands, so that whatever you were doing was the wrong thing to do. You turned into a textbook escapist-enabler because of him. All your life you've just retreated into yourself and done whatever other people want so they'll leave you alone. That's how your power manifested. It makes you big and imposing or small and unassuming, depending on what you need to be. You needed to be two people, so you became two people. And it made you the perfect getaway artist to escape the trouble you were in. We could work Gulliver twice as hard as Kaiser and his sister did, as long as we never told him he was wrong for doing exactly what we said to do."

"Well, damn," Theo said, sitting back, his eyes wide.

"Maybe I'm wrong," Danny said. "But I probably got most of it right. And I can tell you that we're not going to yell at you for doing the right thing."

"The name's fine," Trainwreck said, turning away. "So, now we're up to twelve members. Damn."

"Twelve?" Pariah said, glancing around and taking a quick count. "Oh, you're including Taylor."

"Damn right I am," Trainwreck said. "She punched out Jack Slash, that's an asset to any team."

"Yeah, guys, hey," she said, waving her hand for a bit of attention, "no powers, remember?"

Pariah smirked. "If the high-and-mighty oh-so-noble Protectorate can bend the rules to let you in without powers, I think the rogues and misfits of the Scavengers can get away with it."

Uber looked over at Leet. "We're discussing this? I thought she was a founding member."

"Fine," Taylor said, raising her hands in surrender. "But still, no powers."

"I've still got the plans for your Benthic armor," Leet said. "I don't need to invent anything, but I could if I need to."

Panacea raised her hand to speak. "I can do some modifications. I've been practicing somewhat. I can probably get you superhuman senses, muscle density, some organic weaponry, things like that."

Uber looked over at Danny. "Remember that stuff you were saying about me making myself an expert martial-arts instructor? I can start teaching her any fighting style you like, and she'll pick it up faster than almost anyone else could."

"I can probably upgrade the armor," Trainwreck said. "Trade out the capacitors for disposable fuel cells. I can whip 'em up a dozen at a time and they'll give you a hell of a lot of oomph."

Danny grinned over at his daughter, and she had to suppress a smile. Because they both saw already that working together in the Scavengers was not going to be like working different shifts in the Protectorate and Wards.

* * *

A month later, the changes to the city were clear and obvious. The new mayor, under judicious pressure, had made rapid changes to the city's infrastructure and roads, putting together a stunning repair job. Part of the roadwork was sped up by the contributions of Scavenger Industries, Trainwreck was shockingly good at building construction equipment and earthmovers that would last long a few weeks. The city had plenty of manpower to run the machines, working three shifts a day to get things fixed. And it was sped up and simplified further by narrowing the streets; in many places the major damage in the center lanes of the road were either filled in with dirt and planted with grass to make a median divider. The city had less traffic congestion since the population had adapted to riding buses and bikes or just walking about, they didn't need as much road as they had before. And with fewer lanes it was easier to make a fix and get the planks out of the way, replaced by recently-poured asphalt.

The Protectorate Tower was gone, though the PRT offices next door still stood, and the excess PRT personnel from the Tower had been redistributed to the police precincts for consultation and armed support if necessary. The Tower itself had been broken down for steel and concrete, fed to Scavenger Industries for materials. The Boat Graveyard was also gone, the rusted metal converted into bulldozers and cranes to fix the city, leaving behind a clean new stretch of harbor for loading and unloading. With new jobs in that area and no more eyesore, land values began to rise and the neighborhoods improved as the residents found their squalid homes now had equity and investment value. The big flat gray warty square of Scavenger Industries sat near the north ferry station in the Docks, convenient to the boat harbors and the trainyard. A lot of the senior management and engineers for the Scavengers actually commuted up from downtown on the ferry, while the more educated kids from the Docks got new jobs downtown. The division between the districts was beginning to dissipate. The Boardwalk was more bohemian now, the fashionable poor mingling with the fashionable rich. The overpriced Local Businessmen's Guild shops were losing their stranglehold on tourist money without their enforcers around to kick out the local art students who sold their wares or performed for the out-of-town visitors. The first of those established souvenir shops had already closed its doors, been bought out and replaced by a gallery serving local artists.

But it wasn't enough.

"Seriously, we've proven that there's a real industrial market out here!" Danny fumed, pacing. "We can get the factories going, we can hire people, ship in materials, ship out products! I've already got them a tax break for this stuff, and we've proven that the business works!"

"We can't force them to keep their doors open," Panacea said, calmly. "I mean, unless the Scavengers want to threaten or coerce them."

Danny tried not to snap. "I don't want anything like that! I just want them to do the right thing, the smart thing!"

"If people were good at doing what was right and smart, this would be a very different world," Panacea chuckled. "Seriously, we live in a world where people who get tortured or abused too much get superpowers that let them kill whoever is torturing and abusing them. And yet despite that, people did not stop abusing and torturing each other. Any sensible species would immediately have become as kind and peaceful as possible just to keep from getting set on fire, but humanity... well, it's what we have."

Danny paused in his pacing. "That is... that is a tremendously good point. Holy crap. But all I'm saying is that these other factory owners are throwing money away! They should be happy to stay in business! I mean, we're not pricing them out of the market, we're not underselling them by much, we're not paying our employees much over the market value. It's no more expensive for them to ship their materials into the city as it is for just us. Heck, we supply by ships and trains, the economy of scale should make it easier for them to cut costs! But instead..."

"Instead they're selling their land to a developer to turn into condos," Taylor said. She was half-sitting half-laying in a slouch chair, draped all over it. "Sorry Dad, but when the land values started coming up, they saw a payout. They're probably going to try to build new factories out in cheaper land further from the Docks, closer to poorer and more desperate people that will work cheaper."

"Cleaning up the Docks and bringing prosperity back to the city's manufacturing centers was supposed to solve problems," Danny half-shouted, turning his eyes up towards the ceiling. "Instead I've got greedy idiots causing new problems because they think they can get paid twice. But if they move their factories further from the water, it's going to send their costs up not down!"

"We're still lucky that they haven't moved all their business to Mexico or China," Taylor pointed out. "Maybe you just had your expectations pegged way too high." Panacea nodded but didn't say anything.

Danny paced around the room a full lap before he spoke again. "You know what Uber and Leet suggested? That we just buy out the factories they're selling, refit them, and expand our business. We could grab five or six in a row, and then we'd have to choose between whether we'd rather make scandalous profits, or just pay our employees several times the average wage for this work. But I know that if we try that, we're going to be pushing real close against the local monopoly laws. Taking that big a piece of the market share would kick in incentives for competitors. Have you looked at how those incentive payouts are arranged? I've looked at it. It would be more profitable for our so-called competitors to fire all their workers, keep the factories open in name only, and collect the subsidies. If we buy too many factories, all the other factories will lay off their people and refuse to sell to us. And if they keep selling off like they've been doing, it'll trigger the incentives anyway."

Panacea looked away from the other girl for a moment. "So, either Scavenger buys up several factories and puts them to work and the rest of the owners just sit back and collect free profit, or we don't buy them and they build condos until they've sold enough to sit back and collect free profit. Sounds like a stupid law, someone should make a better law."

"The owners of a local factory putting forward a motion to the city council to change the monopoly laws just as the rest of the competition is dropping out? That looks bad," Danny said. "Heck, it _is_ bad! There's no way that won't end up completely corrupt. There is nothing we could propose that wouldn't wind up with us abusing our influence and authority to earn more money."

"It's not like we keep the money," Taylor said. "Surely that changes things?"

Panacea tapped the other girl on the elbow. "Okay, you're done for now."

Taylor nodded and stood up, shook herself out. "Any side effects I should know about?"

"Food cravings are likely to be intense this time," Panacea said. "Especially for meat and colored vegetables. No matter what food cravings you get, don't eat anything raw. There may be some pain, aching and soreness is fine, if it progresses to shooting pain let me know. There could be tremors in extremities, again call me immediately. If you poop anything you shouldn't poop, call me immediately. Some skin peeling is normal, keep track of any flavors that taste different to you after this and let me know so I can adjust for it. I've left samples for myself in clearly labeled areas, I can reverse all the changes if I need to."

Taylor nodded. "Got it. Okay, I've gotta get back to my training. Thanks, Pan. And Dad? Leave this factory thing alone for a while, think things over, don't do anything impulsive." The door swung shut behind her, and Danny tried to control his pacing. And his ranting. He could hear her tone, he knew she was scolding him not to let his convictions take over and send him off the rails again. But he really missed the feeling of being _right_ , and he was ready for all these swirling doubts and questions to be gone. It was hard to hold close to them when he could just start _doing_ something and fix the problem. But, he knew that he could hurt a lot of people like that, so he held himself back.

Panacea stood and stretched. "Look, you've had a tough day, I've had a tough day, let's just let the chips fall where they may with this factory thing. It's starting to look like factories in this city might just not be meant to be. I don't know. But you need to go crash out, or you'll be tired tonight. Or, you can let me do some of the upgrades I put on your daughter. She only needs ninety minutes of sleep a day, and I didn't even mess with her brain directly."

Danny shook his head. "There may be a day soon when I want superhuman strength, regeneration, and only a little sleep each day, but not quite yet. Can you give me anything to help me sleep?"

"Yeah," she said, reaching forward and grasping his forearm. "Just a second... okay, that's in your bloodstream now. Get yourself in a bed or you'll wake up really uncomfortable."

"Thanks, Pan," he said, echoing his daughter. He went off in search of a bed, so he'd be well rested later. After all, in ten hours they were going to fly into Boston under cover of darkness and take out a lot of potential threats, and we've got a full briefing first."

* * *

The two shapes glided mostly silently through the night sky. The wings beat steadily, tirelessly, to support the weight of four people apiece. The gliders were larger than they seemed, sixty foot wingspans, but rather than the lazy glide of a large bird of prey they had the wingbeat pattern of a smaller bird. Most large birds used gliding instead of beating because they couldn't keep up the energy expenditure for long. But since these were shaped telekinetic constructs, usual biological limitations didn't apply.

"Okay, Sierra Leader, your GPS says you're nearly there. You just crossed city limits, heading to downtown." Dinah Alcott, the Gambler, was back home in Brockton Bay, but the comms kept them connected. And she was just as useful from back there as she was right in the thick of danger.

"Roger, Sierra Zero," he said, pressing his palm to the side of his head to activate the earpiece and shouting to be heard over the roaring wind. He looked over at the other glider, and pointed downward at a sloping angle, aimed at a cluster of low buildings on the verge of the downtown district. The young woman that sat at the head of that glider nodded, and their vehicles began dropping altitude, swooping down in that direction. He looked over his shoulder, and found his squad members stretching their legs, taking their bearings, and getting ready to deploy for the mission. He made eye contact with Circus, Uber, and Leet in particular and waited until each of them had given him a nod before he turned around to face the rooftop they were landing on. The gliders turned into broad crude parachutes in the last twenty feet, and they landed as softly as they could.

Wharf Rat tucked and rolled, coming up to his feet alongside the others. Trainwreck was still on the ground, wincing. "Sprained something," he muttered through gritted teeth, and Panacea moved to his side, laying her hands on to heal him up. Seconds wasted. It was seconds they had, but it showed a need for a little more practice and a little more precision. Meanwhile Circus was pulling his jacket out of her dimensional space and handing it to him, then handing slim backpacks to Uber and Oni Lee. Gulliver appeared at his normal human size, and handed Circus back her mallet. It was big, and heavy, and it took a lot of room in her dimensional space. But if it traveled with Gulliver, it had no mass at all. Oni Lee teleported in and adjusted his gear, sharing a nod with Wharf Rat, while Pariah unstitched the gliders they had ridden in on, folding the fabric up into a saddlebag she pulled out from under her blousy robes.

Danny directed thirty or forty rats to Amy, and she gave each one a brief touch as she repeated the familiar maneuver of turning ordinary rats into repeater rats. He sent those rats out into the city, broadening his range while he brought two blocks worth of rats all together for her. They swarmed up Amy's body, covering her in a thick layer, and she began rebuilding them, reshaping them, joining them together with a sample of Crawler that carried his power and forming her giant suit of biological armor. Salvage jumped down into the alleyway, and began unspooling his limbs to merge with trash and debris back there while Trainwreck went to assemble his new suit. Circus and Gulliver stepped in to help Uber set up the workstation.

"Sierra Zero, by cardinal directions," he said into his mouthpiece.

"West of you," she said, and he nodded, directing the repeater rats to the west. Pariah had reduced the gliders down to panels of fabric and thread, and she was restitching them while she called down into the alleyway where her teammates were disassembling an abandoned car. In a minute Pariah's headless horses were hitched up to Trainwreck's cart, and the team leaped into the open carriage while they worked. Trainwreck was assembling his armor with help from Panacea and Benthic, Uber and Leet were conferring in low voices over comms while the big man worked on their portable console. Salvage and Panacea were jogging alongside, with Oni Lee teleporting from rooftop to rooftop to give a running overwatch. Pariah unspooled some black cloth to form uniforms for Salvage and Panacea, stitching it directly over their bodies. With hoods pulled low and dim lighting, it could become hard to tell the different members of the Scavengers apart from each other.

He held up a hand, and the horses trotted to a halt and the tires of the cart came to a rest. "Okay, I think this is the place," Danny said. "Start deploying on Plan A while Sierra Ten confirms the location."

"Yeah, it's the spot," Gulliver said, glaring at the sprawling estate he had been held prisoner within. The front gates were ornate but solidly built, the walls were high and topped with a discreet ridge of broken glass and barbed wire. The main house was palatial, and there were a dozen outbuildings, guest houses and cabins. And in the basement was a gym and a regulation-size basketball court whose floor was trashed by thousands of spear points he had spent weeks dodging. The manor estate that Empire Eighty-Eight had bought out and hidden themselves in while they worked on rebuilding their network of criminal enterprises without the benefit of anonymity.

Oni Lee stopped next to Wharf Rat, and paused. "This should be easy," the Asian man said, his voice still faltering. All these weeks of recovery, and he still had a hard time taking the initiative enough to even ask a question. But he was more engaged, more involved in the world, even a casual glance made that clear.

"Absolutely," Danny reassured the man. "They're villains, they're tough, but they're nothing like the Lamia and her creations."

"Good," the man said, and jogged away.

Trainwreck pulled himself upright, wearing his shiny new suit of armor. It wouldn't last long, they never did, his power eroded the materials too fast. But for now, it was in top shape. "Sierra Eight, give a hand?" he prompted.

Pariah nodded and rolled out more black fabric, this time covering Trainwreck. It fit loosely in folds but was pulled in tight at the joints to keep it from interfering with movement, and to help conceal the shape underneath. Even in strong lighting, it would be hard to tell Trainwreck from Panacea or from one of Pariah's telekinetic constructs or from Gulliver at his full size, or Salvage at half-size. And since every one of those individuals had very different powers, and very different weaknesses, and different fighting styles, mixing them up could easily be the difference between victory and defeat for their enemy.

Small inconspicuous field mice and house mice began moving into the property, infiltrating every vent and room, while the Scavengers began moving to surround. Uber worked his console and remotely hacked the security system to loop the cameras and disable motion detectors and infrared sensors. With tinker-made gear, expertly-programmed intrusion software and expertly-executed hacking technique, he could work electronic magic. Danny leaned against the console while the rest of the team vaulted the estate's perimeter walls. Oni Lee helped Uber, Benthic and Circus vault over the fence. Pariah began filling her loose-fitting robes with telekinetic force, lifting her feet off the ground and bulking her out with virtual mass that turned her into a big, brawny hitter like Trainwreck and Panacea. Panacea's armor gave her the same size and strength, and with the alley trash he'd picked up Salvage was the same. And they had little trouble climbing over the tall wall, moving in with little real stealth but out here with nobody to hear them it didn't matter. Gulliver helped Oni Lee over the wall, they couldn't afford to have him teleport explosively to get inside and Danny was not ready to have Oni Lee give up all his recovery for the sake of this intrusion. Gulliver was the last of the team to move in, and he simply disappeared seamlessly.

"Sierra team, be aware that all members of Tango target are present in the area of engagement. Rules of engagement are still primary, take prisoners for the PRT and disengage if the only option is to kill or disengage. Tango targets are arranged as follows: In the main house, second floor, north side, we've got Tango One, Six, Seven, and Eight. Main house, first floor, south side, I see Tango Two and Four. In the poolhouse, upstairs, Tango Three and Nine. The guest house by the stables, Tango Four. Chauffeur's suite, Tango Five. Guest cottage, Tango Ten. Currently walking the footpath between north and west quadrants, Tango Eleven. Poolhouse ground level, Tango Twelve and Thirteen."

"Sierra One to Sierra Ten," Leet said over the channel.

"Go for Sierra Ten," Gulliver said.

"Your folks are nasty," Leet said.

Gulliver sighed into the comms. "I know it. Sierra Ten to Sierra Leader, permission to assault the main house second floor north side."

"Denied, Sierra Ten. You're needed at the poolhouse, you're targeting Tango Three and Nine. I don't want them to have a single second to resist. But, stand your alternate by at Tango One. Okay, Tango One and ... guests, in the main house upstairs, is going to Sierra Two, Five, and Six. Tango Two and Four are going to Sierra Three. Again, fast and hard, but nonlethal. Sierra Four, you get Tango Eleven."

"Aw, man," Trainwreck said. "The little girl?"

"The high-end telekinetic," Danny corrected. "Look, you're the one least able to make a silent breach, but your current armor moves fast over level terrain. You're best suited to an open-air attack. Sierra Seven, you're getting Tango Ten. He's near your position, you're resistant to his attacks, and that should free you up to play free safety. Sierra Eight, Tango Twelve and Thirteen. I fully expect you to have that wrapped up in seconds, if you get my meaning."

"I do, and I hate you for that."

Wharf Rat chuckled, but continued. "Sierra Nine, go straight for tango five in the garage, and don't hold back anything at all. Everyone remember, after your target is secured, escalate upwards. Got it?"

A full round of affirmatives and yeahs answered him.

"All right. Sierra Zero?"

"Eighty-ish percent, fluctuating. Be ready for changes, guys," Gambler said.

"You heard the precog," Trainwreck said. "All right, we're ready. On your mark, Sierra Leader."

"And three... two... one... go!"

Lots of things happened at once. Pariah leaned in to look through the window, and spotted Othala and Viktor in their bed. She punched out the window and shot a thread from her telekinetically-enhanced uniform out to pierce the blanket they slept under. They both woke up to find their sheets and pillows binding them tight and choking them unconscious. Panacea kicked in the door of Stormtiger's room and smashed him in the chest while he summoned up his compressed-air claws. He raked futilely at her Crawler-flesh arm while she made contact and flooded his system with sedatives. Trainwreck revved his engines and tore across the lawn, catching Rune with a sideswipe from one massive steel hand before she realized anyone had interrupted her nighttime stroll. Salvage busted through the wall of the garage into the chauffeur's quarters where Alabaster was playing video games, and the largest member of the Scavengers hit the white-skinned man with a massive haymaker punch that slammed him through the opposite wall, every bone broken. Oni Lee teleported into Iron Rain's bedroom, the explosion was devastating in those confined spaces. He pinned her in place by projecting excruciating pain while he used his tazer on Krieg to knock him out. And in the same second Kaiser's windows shattered from three directions as Benthic, Uber and Circus all leaped in through with a shower of glass. Circus reached up and grabbed her mallet out of the air and started swinging for Heith Anders, Theo's mother, but a sword blade shot out of the butt of the handle and speared into the ground, immobilizing it. Uber took a second to shift from his acrobatic skills to his martial arts skills, and in that second sword blades shot out of the walls and floor to pin him in. Benthic was grabbed by two buxom blondes, one on each arm, and while she was terribly strong they had leverage and mass, and started trying to shove her out the window even as they started growing, adding two feet to their height in a second. Meanwhile Gulliver was appearing in the room that Hookwolf and Cricket shared, and he held one tazer in each hand, already touching them with the triggers pulled to shock them unconscious without them ever seeing their assailant.

Mice watched each scene and Danny instantly coordinated the next phase. Mice on the console worked different controls to send several messages simultaneously to his team.

"Sierra Two, grab one and take her out with you, split them up."  
"Sierra Three, secure them both then move to the north side of the house, between the kitchen table and the planter."  
"Sierra Four, taze her to be sure then head for the garage."  
"Sierra Five, switch to knives, nonlethal hits only, slow them down."  
"Sierra Six, grapnel one of the blondes."  
"Sierra Seven, head for the garage, arm up for big hits."  
"Sierra Eight, finish with those two, be putting together two stuffed shirts."  
"Sierra Nine, keep hitting him and don't let up."  
"Sierra Ten, how many can you get?"

Benthic quit struggling to get free of the two blondes that were growing stronger by the second, and instead grabbed one of them with her own grip and threw herself backwards, using their own force to propel herself out onto the lawn. Either Fenja or Menja went with her, tumbling face-first, and let go of Benthic to catch herself. Oni Lee teleported out of the downstairs bedroom and down the hall towards the kitchen, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake as he traveled with rapid-fire short-range teleports. Trainwreck fired up his tazer gauntlet and shocked Rune to make sure she didn't interfere, then he dug his wheels in and shot off towards the garage where Salvage was pulping the white-skinned man. Circus let go of her mallet and started throwing knives; every one of her blades sunk into meaty flesh away from major organs or arteries, enough to hurt and to slow down the villains. Uber used the distraction to grab his grapnel gun and shoot it at one of the growing blondes, wrapping her arm in the cable and hauling her in towards him, bearing down on the blades that hemmed him in. Kaiser swore and flung out a hand, but rather than dispelling the swords he had made to hold Uber in place he created new ones that slanted against them from the outside, so that the blonde would hit the blunt side safely and shove the blades towards Uber. He let himself tumble backwards out the window to dodge the blades, and the growing woman followed him. Panacea was sprinting across the lawn, adapting her Crawler armor for vicious organic weapons and giant claws while she moved to support Salvage. Pariah kept throttling Viktor unconscious with his own blanket, Othala was already out, and with her other hand she started pulling the last of her black fabric out of her belt pouch and tossed it out to form two more telekinetic constructs, indistinguishable from herself. Salvage leaped to the offense as Alabaster rolled back up to his feet, unharmed and untroubled. The white-skinned man could recover nearly instantly from any damage, but not quite fast enough to keep from getting hit again and pounded to paste. Back in Kaiser's bedroom, Gulliver appeared out of nowhere and shocked his mother unconscious, thrusting both tasers into her neck to bring her down. He was as tall as she was right then, and the tasers were similarly outsized. He knew how fast her durability scaled up when she had started growing, and he did not hold back. Kaiser was lunging for the windows, and paused when he spotted the two fights out on the lawn.

"Sierra Two, roll clear, wait for backup, play for time."  
"Sierra Three, straight up, let 'em have it."  
"Sierra Four, I need a big digger."  
"Sierra Five, show me a backdraft."  
"Sierra Six, I need you dodging, backup is on the way."  
"Sierra Seven, keep him hurt and move towards Sierra Four."  
"Sierra Eight, skip over Tango Five and get to the main house."  
"Sierra Nine, you're doing great, angle him to the left."  
"Sierra Ten, get clear!"

Gulliver disappeared just as Oni Lee materialized in, the explosion devastating the room, the concussion taking Kaiser out before he had a chance to manifest giant swords for Fenja and Menja. Circus took hold of the flaming explosion with her pyrokinesis and blew it out the window, away from herself and into the back of the two giants. They were super-tough, but a focused and enhanced explosion was enough to singe their skin pretty badly. Their targets danced clear, looking for opportunities to do more damage. Trainwreck slapped his hands together and formed a crude bulldozer blade, and dug into the ground to lift a few tons of dirt up and leave behind a massive hole. Salvage swatted Alabaster with a massive fist and flung him away. Panacea punched him out of the air and sent him flying, landing at Trainwreck's feet. The tinker kicked the white-skinned invulnerable man into the pit and dropped the dirt on top of him, trapping him underneath. Pariah and her constructs raced past, heading for the two giantesses who were threatening the rest of the team.

"Sierra team, stand clear. Sierra Three, take them out like we discussed."

Oni Lee looked down from the devastated bedroom to the two giant women, and he focused his agony-projection power on the further one. She screamed with immense lungs as she toppled forward, crumpling and writhing in incredible torture. Her twin sister leaped forward to help, cradling her, while Oni Lee leaped out of the window and landed behind her, activating his rage-aura power. And Menja, cradling her sister, felt all her compassion and love turn to bitter hate in an instant, blindingly angry, rushed with red-eyed madness. And the two sisters began punching each other, beating each other savagely. Few things could really hurt them significantly when they were at this size, but one of those things was each other. They were both nearly knocked out when the PRT arrived to clean them up.

"That felt good," Gulliver said.

"Roger that, Sierra Ten," Danny said, his tone much less stiff than his words. "Okay, rendezvous at the vehicles, we're moving to Phase Two."

The lead officer for the PRT on scene stepped out of the response van, and looked down to see a large rat holding a rolled page of paper, staring up at him. He paused, looked around, and squatted down to take the paper. The rat managed to salute clumsily, then turned and ran off into the night. _Officer, our enemy is monitoring radio channels, don't mention our presence please. Thirteen villains here on site, all alive and incapacitated. Alabaster is under the big pile of dirt. Our regrets for the property damage. Signed, Wharf Rat and the Scavengers._

* * *

"Okay, any injuries?" Panacea asked as the carriage took off. Circus raised her hand and Panacea got to work. Oni Lee's explosion came with fire that Circus could manipulate, but also a shockwave that pyrokinesis could not divert, and even at a distance of fifteen feet it was enough to cause some injuries.

"You've got a target?" Pariah said, looking over her shoulder to Wharf Rat.

He nodded, and pointed. "Two blocks down, then take a right. Then five or six blocks, make a detour or we'll get caught up in a roundabout. I'll walk you through after that."

"Okay," she said, and turned her eyes back to the road, controlling the two huge quadrupeds that towed their carriage around.

"Locking down channels and frequencies," Uber said, without looking up from the console. "I'm working PRT frequencies, police band, EMTs, local news, local traffic, ham, CB, and that's not even getting into message boards and social media. Good news is I don't have to screen it all at the source, I just need to keep certain individuals here in the city from hearing anything. And this late at night it's easier than it would have been during the day."

Salvage just nodded. He was shrunk down again, midget-sized. He could gather mass and drop it easily, and for travel it was easier if he was small rather than big. "Okay, so that went well. That's thirteen white supremacists out of commission. Why was that important?"

"Because they used to be based in Brockton Bay," Trainwreck said. "And then the boss chased 'em out. He got half their people arrested, and then he joined the heroes. So Kaiser took his Empire to Boston to meet up with his sister, and he started gathering his out-of-town troops and recruiting new people. And now that the hero team has left Brockton, it was a matter of time until Kaiser comes back to Brockton to try to take back what he thinks of as his, and also revenge on Wharf Rat. So, this is an imminent threat that was wiped out in just a few hours, with no losses and no danger to anyone else."

Wharf Rat nodded. "It's about taking initiative. Every time I've let the bad guys set the timetable, they've made sure it was to their advantage. Or they've hurt a lot of people before we've been able to stop them. So, from now on, we're on our timetable, not theirs."

Panacea pushed back her hood, bringing her face out into the open. The wind whipped at her hair. "It's the next part I'm not sure if I get. Sure, beat up the white supremacists before they can get revenge. But taking on the Boston underworld at the same time just seems different."

"Yeah," Oni Lee said. His forehead was crinkled with concentration.

Wharf Rat leaned back against the side of the carriage. "Okay, it's about the biggest bad guys we've ever faced. Worse than Endbringers. It's about the people that screwed over Trainwreck and Salvage, took their bodies and their memories and their families. It's about the conspiracy that created Lamia, Shatterbird and Siberian and turned them loose on the world. We found a trail that leads to them. It took me a few days of asking Gambler questions, but we got it pinned down. And it turns out that it's not that far out of our way, we can make a lot of progress tonight before we go home. And in the process, we'll work our way through a dozen more villains, one of whom is going to try to attack Brockton just to take Gambler away from us, and probably bring some of the others with him."

Taylor examined her elbow, checking the armor for damage. "Add to which, this guy we're after is like the textbook definition example of what Rat was saying about letting bad guys take initiative. This villain is basically unbeatable if he's had time to plan, and helpless if he has not. And also a sadistic sociopath, a casual killer with no remorse. So, if there's anyone we need to make a field trip to take out, it's this guy."

"But we don't know where he is exactly," Gulliver said. "I mean, I know he's in the city. And my father had occasional deals with Accord. But usually through a middleman. So, we're looking for the middleman."

"Which is why I'm navigating," Wharf Rat said. "Ever since we hit Boston I've been combing the place with repeater rats, and I have a fix on something that has to be the place. Kaiser's smell is there, along with his bodyguards. And lots of other people. And lots of drugs, and weapons. So, if this isn't where we find Topsy, it's someone that can tell us where."

"Which floor?" Salvage asked as he trotted for the door.

"Sixth floor west," Danny said. "Target's on the seventh." He listened, he smelled, he watched what he could, and moved in his troops. Panacea followed after Salvage, and then Trainwreck in his refinished armor, and then Pariah filled her clothing with her telekinetic force and the loose robes bulged with virtual muscle that transformed her into an eight-foot-tall brute. Circus, Benthic and Uber started vaulting their way to the roof of a nearby building, then readied the grappling hook. Gulliver disappeared, and Wharf Rat made the call to switch the console over to a frequency scrambler just in case their targets managed to get a call out. "Gulliver, check in when you've got confirmation."

Theo Anders was currently one inch tall and hiding in the apartment's kitchen cabinets. He was also twelve feet tall and incorporeal. His hands reached through the glass of windows and settled on the windowsills, pulling himself up hand over hand. His feet set on the windowsills and pushed up, and he climbed the building almost faster than the elevator did. As soon as he got to the sixth floor he slipped himself inside the building, then stood up straight and shoved his head through the ceiling. He looked around the seventh-floor apartment, and took in the drugs and guns and muscle in the place, and the three tough-guys who stood like they were wearing guns. Also a spooky-looking thin man leaning against a wall, Theo recognized him from his picture: Watch. A teenage girl he couldn't place and didn't seem to fit in, she was probably parahuman, probably new. And there on the couch was Topsy himself. He crouched down into the sixth-floor apartment while the rest of Team A walked inside, the brute squad. Nobody home, Wharf Rat had already chased the residents out with nips and hisses. He solidified his larger self and reached up to touch the earbud. "It's the place, we're go," he said to Wharf Rat. His smaller self was already growing to regular size and walking out of the cabinet.

Danny hit the all-call channel on his mouthpiece. "Topsy's inside, seventh floor west, along with two unknowns and at least three human henchmen and a shit-ton of blow."

"Breach team in position," Panacea said. The earpiece was with Amy so it was her voice they heard, and not the crackling growling sounds of the Crawler armor. "Checking off: Salvage, Trainwreck, Gulliver, Pariah, Panacea."

"Roger," Danny said. "Marking the support beams for you." Inside, rats were punching holes in the sheetrock of the ceiling in the sixth-floor apartment, baring the load-bearing beams that kept the seventh-storey floor from caving in on them. The thick fingers of large hands punched through the marked areas and grabbed the beams, ready for the signal, and he pulled the rats back to a safe distance. Circus and Uber fired their grappling gun, punching the far end into the brickwork over the sixth-floor window, then readying themselves for the slide. "Okay, gang, keep in mind the building is occupied, collateral damage minimum, got it? Three, two, one."

His super-strong teammates pulled, and the beams snapped at the same time, dumping the seventh-floor apartment into the sixth-floor apartment in a colossal avalanche of furniture and fixtures and plaster dust and falling bodies. Oni Lee teleported, blowing out the window just in time for Circus and Uber to slide in and hit the ground in a roll. The targets were dazed and any attempts they made to right themselves were hampered by the breach team trying to pull themselves out from under the floor and furniture. Oni Lee clocked Topsy across the mouth with a fist, Circus took Mockshow in a chokehold, and Uber punched Watch in the side of the head and felled him with one expert knockout punch. Gulliver grabbed the cell phone and handed it off to Uber while the breach team gently knocked out the three hired guns. Uber swung down the grapnel line and rappelled down to the street while the rest of the Scavengers pulled themselves free and headed back down the building's stairs or jumped out the window to drop to street level.

Uber only took a few seconds to hack what he needed out of the phone. "Got an address," he said, nodding.

"Gambler, confirm and speculate," Danny said.

"Ninety-seven percent plus, and your outcome is really cloudy. It seems generally better if you strike with surprise."

Cars pulled out of the way as the carriage galloped down the streets of Boston, converging on one skyscraper office building. A block away they pulled over into an alley and moved to their infiltration. Uber began overriding the building's security measures, looping cameras and disabling door locks and alarms, spoofing them so the on-call security service would think all was well. Danny found them a path underground, a service tunnel from the parking garage that led down to the basement and gave them access to the freight elevator. Rats streamed through the building's systems and floors, gathering towards the top, towards the objective.

Danny checked his watch, it had been an hour and a half since they had landed in Boston.

Accord had six of his Ambassadors spread through the building, two of them attending to various duties or standing by for his whim. Danny stayed at the base of the building and directed his teammates by radio and signals from the rats. Internal communications were shut down or redirected so that when the team started to advance, the Boston villains had no advance notice at all. A flood of rats spilled through the building, and the Scavengers walked in. The floor thudded under the giant feet of Panacea, Salvage, Trainwreck and Pariah. Uber and Circus watched every direction for traps, sensors, alarms, or any other problems. Gulliver walked with the team, as his counterpart walked through walls and snooped around. Benthic and Oni Lee walked at the center of the group, waiting for a signal.

"Internal directory puts Accord's quarters on the second-to-top floor," Uber said, looking up from his smart phone.

"I'm already bringing the elevator down," Wharf Rat said.

After that it all went to shit.


	19. Chapter 19

"That's odd," Uber commented. "Boss, the elevator just cruised down past the ground level into the basement."

"It's getting odder," Danny reported. "I've been moving into the superstructure, and a whole lot of small charges just went off. High heat, no concussion. Maybe thermite or phosphorous, I'm hardly an expert. It looks like it just got most of the joints for the building's internal structure."

"Shit," Trainwreck hissed. "We've been made. We must have set off some kind of alarm or a trap."

"Sierra Zero?" Danny prompted.

"Okay, I've got zero percent chance you make it up undetected, you guys are already busted. But... an eighty-eight percent chance of victory without casualties."

"Eighty-eight's been a bad omen tonight," Benthic pointed out, touching her comm piece. She looked around at the rest of the team, and saw some pensive postures. She was sure the expressions behind their masks and hoods were just as anxious.

"Okay, uh, eighty-eight point two one seven nine," Gambler elaborated.

"That's better," Uber said. "Okay, if the elevators are out of the question we can move up through the stairs."

Salvage shrugged. "Stairs could be trapped. I can just knock holes in the ceiling and take the unexpected way up."

"Belay that," Wharf Rat said, staring upwards. "You're not seeing what I'm seeing. With the structure sabotaged, this whole building is swaying in the breeze. The structural supports aren't joined together anymore, they're basically just stacked on top of each other. It's gone flimsy and wobbly. If you start punching through floors, you'll probably bring the whole damn building down on your heads. Oh, more good news: the exterior doors just sealed closed. Welded, I think more thermite or phosphorous, and some kind of bars just dropped across them. You're not leaving the way you came in."

"Windows are trapped too," Oni Lee said, stepping away. One of the Butcher's powers was a short-range danger sense, and he could sense danger from the glass and the frame both.

"Looks like we head up through the gallery of traps," Panacea said.

"Sierra Ten, explore the upper floors," Wharf Rat said. "Intangible only, keep one of you down with the team. I'm bringing rats up from the basement to scout the building, but you move faster than I do. I'll be disabling traps as I find them. Everyone else, move to the stairs, cautiously."

"Maybe the upper-floor windows aren't trapped," Pariah suggested. "We may be able to get out of this building that way if we need to."

"We'll keep an eye on that option," Wharf Rat replied. "Okay, Sierra Ten, what've you got?"

"Unusual construction all over the place. Hardly any people around, just some after-hours security. They're armed and holding defensive positions with a regular check-in. Also, any of the Ambassadors that were asleep and off-shift, they're awake now. So, that sucks. Guess we won't be catching him in his bed," Gulliver said. "There's hidden passages, pits, spring-loaded blades, other stuff. It's all very mechanical, surprisingly low-tech from what I can see. No bombs, no electrified surfaces."

"He probably thinks they're either less predictable or less elegant than simple physics traps," Wharf Rat hazarded. "All right, pull your second back, I want you leapfrogging back to front. We put Sierra Three at the front, use his danger sense. Next one of Sierra Eight's stuffed shirts, to set off traps without endangering any of you. Go ahead and breach the stairwell whenever you're ready."

Oni Lee placed his hand on the door and pushed. Four generations of super-strength surged, and the door came off its hinges. A guillotine blade came down through the doorframe, hidden inside the wall, and Oni Lee pulled back fast enough to get nothing but a deep gash that ran from his elbow to his knuckles. Bone was visible in the second before blood flooded the wound. Panacea stepped up and started healing him before the first red drop hit the floor, and by the time he was fully mended there was only a small amount of blood loss. "Hmm," he said, staring at the blade. "Switch was up high, out of my range."

"Sierra Leader, be advised that Sierra Three's danger sense is not entirely reliable for us," Trainwreck said into the comms.

"Understood," Wharf Rat said. "Proceed with caution."

The first set of stairs crumbled away when they put weight on them, and the ledge to climb up past them was embedded with sharp blades and a collapsing structure so as to cut off the fingers of anyone that tried to climb past the stairs. "I've got a bad feeling about this," Uber said. Trainwreck placed his hands over the blades and let his teammates climb up his back, keeping them safe as they scrambled up onto the landing. Oni Lee helped pull the massive power armor up onto the landing as well.

"Not the rail," Oni Lee, gesturing for nobody to touch it. Trainwreck grasped it, and curved blades sprang out up and down the length. The blades clanked on his armor, and he just 'hmm'ed to himself in mild interest. Oni Lee gave him a short glare.

"Hang on a second," Wharf Rat said. "The fire sprinkler on the next landing is filled with high-power acid. I'm severing the lines and diverting flow." There was a massive thrumming sound as it was disabled. "Okay, good to go."

"No," Oni Lee said. He gestured for Parian to send her construct up, and it placed one foot on the stairs before they crumbled away, sending the homunculus tumbling all the way back down to the bottom and landing on the broken concrete from the first flight of stairs. A twenty-foot fall onto edged rubble, sure to cripple most people or most parahumans. Pariah deflated the construct and Uber fetched it back up with his grapnel gun. Salvage reached over and knocked out the rest of the trapped stairs, and then leaned forward to bridge the gap between landings with his own massive body. The team clambered quickly across him, and then he shed a couple tons of mass so they could help pull him up onto the landing.

Circus cut three tripwires in rapid succession, and Gulliver pointed out a flight of stairs that was hinged to swing down and crush anyone underneath. And each time they disarmed the traps, there was a weird hollow distant thrumming noise. "What is that noise, anyway?" Benthic asked.

"I'm gonna check it out," Wharf Rat said. "You guys keep moving."

A collapsing wall tried to force them over the stair rail to fall to the ground below, but Pariah was able to hold the mass at bay long enough for Salvage to gather it for himself. And as soon as the broken wall was cleared, guards on the other side opened fire. Salvage crossed his arms in front of his face and advanced on them, covering the team behind him. Oni Lee leaped over the stairs so he was far enough from his teammates, then teleported into the midst of the guards with a detonation that flung them all about like rag dolls. Panacea jumped from one to the next, sedating them before they could gather themselves.

"That sound is from the elevator shaft," Wharf Rat said. "That elevator that dropped into the basement, it's rocking back and forth in its shaft, swinging on its cable. Seems like every trap we disable sets off a counterweight that smacks into the elevator cab and sets it swaying. It's building its vibration the further up you go."

There was a bit of a pause, the Scavengers trading a look with each other. It was Leet that spoke up, from back at the Brockton Bay headquarters. "That doesn't sound safe," he pointed out. "Set off too many traps, or spot them and disable them, and the building starts coming apart from the inside."

"We should get off the stairs," Pariah said.

"Hold on," Wharf Rat said. "Got a hunch. Sierra Zero, odds of no-casualty victory if they stay on the stairs or if they move away?"

"Um, eighty-seven percent on the stairs, forty-one percent if they don't."

"Thought so," Wharf Rat said. "The thrumming is deliberate, it calls attention to the oscillations in the elevator cable. It built up a lot right before the wall came down, to make you want to get off the stairwell and try a different way up, through a new gallery of traps before you get steered right back to the stairwell. Traps, within traps, within traps." He paused, took some deep breaths, considered the position, and made a conclusion. "Okay, Sierra Zero, I've got a new plan. Odds?"

"Um, eighty-six percent if you do, forty percent if you don't."

"Okay then. Guys, we switch strategies, I'm calling an audible on this play. Move onto the floor. Don't touch anything and send the stuffed shirts out in front to check for pits and pressure plates. Move to the windows. Sierra Ten, you're heading upwards. Find me some Ambassadors, and take them out. Invisibility and intangibility are two of the least-common powers, and among the hardest to plan for, so you're our ace in the hole, our monkey wrench. Go get 'em. Be careful, you've got no backup. Don't look for Accord, just his minions. I'm moving my rats out, stay in contact. Talk me through what you're doing."

"Um, okay," Gulliver said. "I spotted Citrine up on the eighteenth floor, looks like she was doing something with air pressure and concentrating on the wall adjoining the stairwell. I'm climbing up, my way. Reach through the floor, pull myself up, set my feet, stand up, reach through the next floor. Okay, she's right there. Hang on a second, and ... and okay, she's tazed out now. Looks like this room's built on a piston to move her up once she's attacked us, so she can jump us again at a higher level. Dirty. Okay, now that I know what I'm looking for it's pretty easy to find the Ambassadors, they're all in these heavy steel rooms with extra-thick walls. I don't even know this guy's name, but he's dressed in this really dark bright red."

"Bright colors are light, dark colors are not," Pariah said. "The word you're looking for is 'deep', or perhaps 'jewel-toned'."

"Okay, yeah, that," Gulliver said. "Now, some guy in blue with starburst patterns. He, oh, he takes a lot of putting down. Hang on. There we go. Uber, thanks for making me bring this gun full of rubber bullets, it made the difference today. Climbing, climbing..."

"We're at the window," Panacea said.

"Good deal, Sierra Eight, can you let them down to the ground safely?"

"Mostly safely. Small fall at the end."

"Got it. Get Sierra Three down first, have him catch Sierra Nine. Nine, get small and then get big when you're on the ground, start catching the rest as they come down," Wharf Rat said. "If Accord likes traps so much, odds are he's already got a way out of his own trap. I want to see it. And whatever it is, it's less dangerous than pushing up the stairwell."

"Roger that, Sierra Leader," Gulliver said. "Okay, just tazed Othello out. Easy and done."

Danny watched the Scavengers break out the windows on the ninth floor, and Pariah deflated her minions and turned them into a thick rope to let her comrades climb down. Oni Lee appeared at the bottom in an explosion, and the team began climbing down one at a time. Salvage dropped the last fifteen feet into Oni Lee's arms, then began gathering dirt from the ground to bulk himself up. His limbs divided and unraveled, rendered down to thin bands and strands that gathered the dirt and pulled it into the shame of arms and legs, binding it in place with a thin network of his strands. It shifted and repositioned under his uniform, filling him out and bulking him up until he was big enough to reach up and grab his teammates and set them down on the ground. Pariah was the second to last, she deflated her robes and climbed down, then brought the cloth rope with her. The last one down was Trainwreck, who took a flying leap out the window with a loud whoop and a cry of "Cannonbaaaaaaaaall!"

Salvage and Panacea and Pariah caught him, but it was close.

Gulliver materialized on Danny's shoulder, two inches tall. "Okay, all out and all clear."

"Right then. Scavengers, the building has no stable support. Several really good hits to this corner of the building should topple it," Wharf Rat said.

"Awesome," Uber said, his eyes lit up. "All the best games have destructible environments."

Trainwreck snorted. "I was so sure you were going to reference the load-bearing boss monster." Circus swatted him on the arm, it made a gonging sound.

Panacea took the first round, spraying a wash of Crawler acid across the building facade to expose the loosened structure. It had a building's worth of weight on top of it, so even unsecured it was wedged tightly in place. But it was still a weakness. Once the I-beam was exposed, Trainwreck started punching it from one side while Salvage took the other side. There was a four-foot difference in their height, so between the two of them they started to slowly knock it askew, leaning left from the top and leaning right at the bottom, as well as denting it and bending it. A crimp appeared slowly in the thick metal, and they bashed it a few more times. The metal began to groan, and the crimp grew into a crease, and then it sagged enough that the wrinkle radiated like crow's feet and started to buckle in place.

"Haul ass!" Trainwreck bellowed as they sprinted away, heading at a right angle from the direction of the building. Salvage made surprisingly fast time, his long legs stretching way out. Trainwreck moved from running to rolling on the tires built into his armor, and they were both well clear before the sagging I-beam set off the chain reaction that started the building falling. There was a loud gonging noise and an elevator cable snapped out through the building, shearing through supports before it was reeled in. Glass exploded through one side of the building, and then the opposite side of the building sagged inward and turned into an avalanche of powdered concrete and shattered windows.

"There were people in there," Benthic pointed out.

"There were a couple dozen security goons who were waiting for a chance to shoot us because their boss the supervillain paid them too," Wharf Rat clarified.

"Okay, yeah," she said, conceding that point. "They were ready to murder us, so I guess this is kind of self-defense."

The building swayed away from the avalanche, toppling in slow motion, and a heavily-built steel box tipped over the edge and started sliding down the avalanche, sledding along miraculously smoothly. And then another and then more, all of them the size of a medium room, with sealed doors at the ends. Gulliver nodded. "Oh, yeah, that's what they're for. Okay, that's the six Ambassadors all sealed up in their giant padded air-bags and delivered to the bottom. Any of them that are still conscious can let themselves out and attack, except I took care of that."

"Holy..." Pariah trailed off, staring upwards. One more steel room was launched out, trailing a long elevator cable. It shot out sideways on a long, looping arc, well away from the rest of the building's collapse. The building's fall seemed to be counterweighting the propulsion of this last room. It started to fly over the building next door, then the cable snapped taut for a second and then relaxed, just enough to arrest the momentum and set the giant steel box directly on the roof's helipad.

"This guy is really starting to annoy me," Trainwreck growled. Circus nodded.

There was a short trek to the next building. The front door crumbled in front of Trainwreck's fist, and the single security guard in the lobby just held up his hands and backed away, leaving them to take the elevators. "We'll get the first one and secure the top," Trainwreck said when he saw how small the cabs were on the inside. He and Circus piled inside and she squirmed past him to push the button for the rooftop. The doors slid closed, dinged softly, and then exploded.

Pariah fell back, her hands held to her face in shock, while Benthic and Oni Lee leaped forward to rip away what was left of the elevator doors. Panacea lunged out of her Crawler suit and let it collapse on the ground behind her, and Oni Lee pushed Circus's corpse into her hands. Panacea tried, and pushed, and worked, but the life she needed wasn't there and she could not create it from nothing. It took a few minutes to extract Trainwreck from his suit and pass it off, but he was just as dead. The bomb had crushed them both utterly, blasted away their flesh, ruptured dozen of organs and fractured their skulls. Trainwreck's suit was powerful, but it corroded exterior was not nearly sealed enough to keep out the overpressure from an explosion.

Wharf Rat stared, and the swirl of questions in his stomach whipped up. Could he have known? Could he have done something different? Could he have saved those two? The roil of his thoughts was always a spiral, and he felt them like a whirlpool that could drag him down. Circular thoughts that came without end, leading from one second-guess to the next. But now the roil of self-doubts was fusing with his anger, and it felt like a tornado inside him. Could he have known? No. Could he have saved those two? No. Could he have done something different? He could have killed Accord in cold blood in his bed instead of sending in his team to engage him with a fair fight.

He was barely aware of his own actions as the rats came. They flooded the building, nearly covered every surface. Up the stairwells, up the walls, through the offices, through the crawlspaces, inside the walls and vents. It took him a few minutes to make sure the rest of the building was clear, and then he started walking up the stairs. He watched through dozens of eyes as his team tried to save Trainwreck and Circus somehow. Oni Lee was cutting open their chests and Uber was palpating their hearts like an expert emergency surgeon, and Pariah was stitching wounds shut to try to keep the blood from leaking out. Panacea still had a hand on either of them, trying to stimulate their life functions any way she could, Gulliver putting pressure on the wounds. Danny barely saw the steps ahead of him. He was halfway to the roof before he realized that Taylor and Salvage were both walking with him, just a few steps behind. He saw only red.

On the roof, the room was still sealed shut. A tide of rats hit it, chewing away seals and rivets, every minuscule weak spot and every join from metal to metal. Panels were pried up, lithe bodies squirmed inside, and the apparatus was chewed apart from the inside. The door clunked and sagged, slid halfway open, sputtered, and then went quiet. Salvage grabbed the doors and hauled them aside, and inside was a modest but tastefully-appointed bedroom. Thick plush carpet, a lavish bed, somber wallpaper, and a mahogany cabinet and bedside table with a flower vase fallen on the floor beside it. "You've taken out my Ambassadors," said the small man who stood in the middle of the room. He wore maroon silk pajamas and slippers, and an elaborate mask with jointed segments that allowed it to flex and move with his facial expressions and speech. "But, at least I took out some of your team."

Wharf Rat stepped inside, his fists raised to pound the small villain in the most barbaric way. But Accord was not done talking. "Though, now I realize that I did not get the one member of your team that matters most to you. No matter, I can resolve that now." He stepped on a particular patch of carpet at the same second as Benthic came through the doorway, and a lance of steel shot through the gap and pierced her armor at the joint between the ribcage and the midriff. "The wound is lethal enough," Accord explained. "But she has also been injected with large doses of a poison that causes a particularly agonizing death and a powerful hallucinogen that will magnify the effects. She is going to die in unimaginable pain, Wharf Rat, unless you leave me right here and take her immediately to the nearest hospital. She has seven minutes to live, and the emergency room is seven minutes and fifteen seconds away if you use the elevators." The girl clutched her stomach and dropped to the ground, grinding her teeth to restrain her screams.

A mouse on the console by the side of the street operated his simple controls in a specific pattern. "Sierra Seven, to the roof, Sierra Two is down." Panacea looked down at her two dead teammates, their injuries too extensive to reverse. She was in tears when she stepped into her Crawler suit and sprinted up the stairs, taking the steps five at a time with the super-strong legs of her organic armor.

Accord stared up at the tall, thin man in the black clothing and hood, glaring through his wooden mask from his deepset dark eyes. "Mister Wharf Rat, you are allowing this young woman to die, a woman I've already figured out you care about more than any other. You love this woman, no, this girl, and you are making no move to take her to the hospital."

"Hospitals come to us," Salvage said, his voice rumbling through his massive chest. Then he reached forward, and picked up Accord, and dragged him out of his lamplit bedroom and out into the harsh nighttime winds of the rooftop. Gravel crunched under his feet and stained his slippers, and then the last shove from Salvage shoved him to his knees to scrape his hands and soil his pajamas.

"What do you want?" the short masked thinker demanded, glaring up at them.

"So many people ask that, but it's never the right question," Scavenger said, his voice tight to keep it from trembling with emotion. "Still, I'll cut to the chase. First: all the accounts and passwords for your banks, every dollar you own or control. Second: all the information you have available about Cauldron."

"You're insane and ludicrous," Accord sneered back. "If you know anything about Cauldron you should know why I don't dare double-cross them."

"I assure you, you would rather sell them out than hold out on me," Danny said. He flinched as Taylor started screaming, the poison starting to work. She writhed and thrashed, her heels scrabbling on the roof.

The thinker switched his gaze back to the Scavenger's leader. "This is a bluff. You're no killer, certainly no torturer. You're the great negotiator, the diplomat, the problem-solver."

"And you're still acting like you're stupid," Danny said, shaking his head sadly. "The best way to negotiate is from a position of strength. I am in a position of strength. And you are a petty, vindictive sadist. A casual killer who pays back minor slights with wildly disproportionate cruelty and violence. You are a _bully_ , Accord, who uses his mean-spiritedness to intimidate. You are a compulsive who believes that there is a place for absolutely everything, who has never once questioned his own assumption that his place is to be in charge, and doesn't even stop to realize that this assumption is what demonstrates what a selfish little psycho you really are. Your own actions and history demonstrate who you are and what you do. Now, in what way do you possibly imagine that leaving you alive is a net benefit to the world? You're exactly the kind of person that people like me break the rules to kill. And I'll share a secret, Accord," Danny said, leaning forward as he pointed behind him towards the screaming teenager. " _I'm not trying to make anyone proud of me anymore_."

"Was that a legitimate question?" Accord asked, his eyes calculating.

"What?"

"You asked why leaving me alive is a benefit to the world," Accord said. "Are you actually asking?"

"I'm actually asking," Danny said, standing straight.

"The cabinet behind me, there's a series of binders. They have the answers to solving various social ills. Poverty, hunger, crime, pollution, things like that. All on a very reasonable budget in a very reasonable time frame."

"And the catch?" he said, as behind him the roof access door burst open and Panacea lunged out. Her armor was unnatural looking, chitinous and meaty, with barbed armor across the forearms and chest, the face a horror show of fangs and mandibles. But it split open at the throat and the chest, folding back to let her out into the air so she could grab Taylor and start working. She didn't take the time to remove the armor, just thrust her fingers into the wound through the hole the lance had carved into her.

"The catch is that you actually _do_ something!" Accord snapped. "Nobody ever does anything, they just say it's interesting and they move on," Accord spat bitterly. Rats opened the doors of the cabinet and started pulling out the binders in question."

And then the world swam. Or something larger than the world, something sinuous and ponderous that flexed its way through the vast voids of space, a tapered mass that undulated from across realities as much as through distance. And with it was another one, the two orbiting each other on the same path. And their outer layers ablated away as they traveled, sheering off like the heat tiles of a space shuttle making reentry, spreading as they spiraled towards their destination. But one of them was off-course.

Danny snapped back to himself, staring at Accord. "What was that?"

"That's a trigger event," Accord said, his voice dripping with horror. He stared at the girl who was sitting up now, holding her head as if to shake the cobwebs out.

Danny looked up at Panacea, met her eyes, traded a look and a nod before he turned back to the villain. "Say, Accord, this young woman over here once mentioned to me how catastrophically, self-destructively stupid it is for anyone to act as cruel and hateful as you do. As she told me, any sensible person who realized that people who are tortured or abused are likely to turn into dangerous parahumans, would stop torturing and abusing people. Why would you act like such a sadist if you know that someday one of your victims will trigger? And here you are."

"You still need answers, and that gives me bargaining power," Accord sneered. "You came asking about Cauldron. You may be good at negotiations, but however this ends will be guaranteed to work out better for me and terribly for you. In the long run, in the big picture, you're nowhere near as smart as I am. So let's negotiate."

"You've triggered," Panacea said to the other girl. Her voice was soft, gentle, comforting, a lifetime of bedside manner. "You're parahuman now. A real one. How do you feel?"

Taylor turned towards the girl, opened her mouth to speak, then paused as if she had just noticed something, figured something out. "Oh," she said in a small voice.

"Oh what?" Panacea asked, her eyes kind.

"Oh, I'm a mind reader," Taylor said.

"What?" Accord demanded.

"I can.. oh," Taylor said, as she turned towards him. "Ah. I've got what we came for, D- Wharf Rat."

Accord's eyes darted all around. "Her father," he said, his gaze settling on the Wharf Rat. "Now here's information we can negotiate for."

"Now you see, this shit is exactly why I am barely inclined at all to give you a hope of leaving here alive," Danny sighed. "You've misunderstood your position again, Accord. Just like you're not the leader of all things by divine right, you're also not an invaluable bargaining chip. You see, as of now it's more important to us that you stop working with Cauldron than that you give us information on them. And they'll get the message one way or the other. Oni Lee?"

The knife appeared in Accord's throat, chipping the edges of one of the articulated wooden segments. The thinker died convinced that he had done it on purpose and damaged his mask just to irritate him as he bled out. Gulliver appeared just in time to watch the villain drop to the ground and pump dark blood out into the gravel of the rooftop. Sirens were pulling close, god alone knew what sort of reaction they were going to have to an entire building falling down in the middle of the night. Danny had to wonder if he was technically a terrorist now.

"Boss?" Salvage said, staring at the open door to the stairwell. A hole was in the air, roughly the shape and size of an open doorway. And on the other side of this gap in nothingness was a brightly-lit white hallway, almost dizzying in its symmetry. Pariah and Uber were standing to the side, he had not even noticed them arriving.

"Later," Danny said, turning away from Accord's corpse to kneel next to his daughter. "Taylor?"

"That really sucked," she said, her voice strange. "But, it's already a memory. A weird, terrible memory. He dosed me with hallucinogens... and something else," she said.

"Can you stand?" Danny asked.

She paused, thinking it through. "I can. If I have to. But I'd rather if I didn't have to, right away."

* * *

"No way," Leet said in their headsets. "There's no such thing as a real mind reader. There can't be. There's just the Simurgh, which is as far past parahuman psychics as Behemoth is beyond parahuman blasters. And of course those psychics you see on TV, but all they can do is tell you what kind of specially-made card you're holding. It's barely useful enough to cheat at cards. Telepathy is impossible."

"And yet here we are," Taylor said. She had her helmet off, and she had it tucked under one arm while the other hand held the giant fabric wing for support. The countryside below was dark and all looked the same, as if they were riding over a black ocean and not trees and roads and houses. Her black curly hair streamed out behind her, the wind pulling tears from her eyes.

"I can't believe we left Trainwreck and Circus behind," Panacea repeated. "They were our friends."

Danny sighed. "I want to find out if we're not declared terrorists before I stand in the middle of a crowd of cops and ask about funeral arrangements. They get really, really unpredictable when a building has been destroyed."

"Look, I can understand leaving the bodies behind, kinda," Leet said. "I've never been one for crying over embalmed meat, the important part of someone is gone when they die and all that's left is carrion. But you know what I don't understand? I don't understand why you left that doorway hanging there. That's what you went there for, that's the invitation you were looking for, and you just picked up and walked away."

Gulliver sat on Danny's shoulder, clinging to his collar. "The man's got a point, boss. We fought for this, we lost people to get their attention, and then we walked away with nothing."

Danny shook his head. "There'll be another invitation. A better invitation. If we'd walked in that door, we'd have been approaching them as supplicants, beggars. Now we've turned them down, and the next time they come to us it will be them asking us for our time and not the other way around."

"That's kind of dumb," Gambler said.

"Status dynamics and power plays are always dumb," Danny said. "But that doesn't mean that people stop doing it, or that it stops being important. Things like that make a big difference. If we sit in their waiting room, we're the subordinates and they're in control. And from there they just need to keep us off-balance, and tease us along with half-truths, cryptic hints and unexplained assertions. And if we push back against it, we come across as being petulant or unreasonable, like children throwing a tantrum. But if they have to come to us to answer for what they've done, it's a whole different dynamic."

"Jesus," Salvage said, shaking his head. "I never realized there were people who think like this."

Taylor looked over at Danny with a curious gaze. "This is how you held your own against Jack Slash, isn't it?"

The words dropped the bottom out of Danny's belly. The solid certainty dissolved into unanswered questions. How had he been unaware that he was doing it again? What had done it to him? Arguing with Accord? Seeing Taylor hurt? Was he always going to manipulate people whenever he got too distracted and lost focus? What was Taylor going to think of this now that she was a mind reader? "Yeah," he said quietly. "Stuff like that is how I talked my way past Jack Slash. Nobody else ever has."

"I've also seen you using it on my principal at school," Taylor pointed out, and he remembered the way that woman stood at the top of steps to give herself the psychological advantage of height and tried to devalue him further by having him come to her. He had flipped the script then, and again tonight. Taylor paused, and continued. "You never seemed to have a knack for that sort of thing. God, you were embarrassing at parent-teacher conferences, just sat there and-"

"Yes then," Danny interrupted. "As long as I'm not working power plays on you guys, I think I'm okay. People like Jack Slash, Accord, and Cauldron, it's the only thing they respect, and you have to get their respect before they stop looking for a way to rob you or kill you and actually talk to you like a person. But, let's cut back to the first issue: our new telepath."

Leet jumped right in where he left off. "It's impossible. It's always been impossible. Look, mind control is easy. Hypnosis has been a thing for a long time. Seventeenth-century technology and an electrical spark can make a brain do things like move a leg or an eye. With parahuman powers, even easier. It's so easy that the closest things we've ever had to mind-reading was to hypnotize someone to tell their secrets, and that's pretty haphazard. Do you know what truth drugs actually do? They make you want to talk, want to trust people, and they screw up your attention span so you can't keep a lie straight. That's it. Look, a copper wire in the brain can mind control someone, but do you know what we've got for mind reading technology? If you put someone in an MRI machine, calibrate it with a ton of trial and error and confirmation bias, screen out external factors, and have the subject cooperate, then you have them concentrate really hard on a simple picture and use the machine to extrapolate a smudgy version of that picture, about two times out of three. That's it. Reading someone's thoughts can't be done because our thoughts aren't just a line of text or a picture. Everything's connected, everything's a context. That's how brains work. Everything is referenced in a dozen places and those parts of the brain all light up to bring those fractions of ideas into one place to make one whole idea. It's like reading a book, but every page has a dozen footnotes to a dozen other books, and every page in those books has a dozen footnotes, and so on and so forth. To be able to read a single page, you need to be able to read the whole library at once."

"And I can," Taylor said. "Look, my dad has infinite multitasking abilities, right? He can control a million rats at once without breaking stride. He can see through their eyes and come up with separate plans for them that all interconnect, right? Heck, he can even scan their memories. Well, just like he can work his power on every rat in a city, I can work my power on every thought and memory in someone's head, all at the same time. I can read the whole library."

There was a long pause, broken only by a flash of moonlight on water underneath them. "Shit," Leet said. "That might work."

Danny reached over and patted Panacea's hand. "I'm going to call the PRT and have them transfer Circus and Trainwreck's bodies back to Brockton Bay for a proper funeral. They'll be able to go over the evidence in what's left of that building, and interrogate the Ambassadors, and that'll clear our names. I'll explain that we came back to Brockton so that nobody in our city would know we were gone and left it undefended. And then they'll send us back our friends, and we'll be able to say goodbye."

"Are you sure?" Panacea said, looking sideways at him.

"As sure as I can be," he said, his mouth tight. "Now, pardon me a moment." He turned away, and softened his voice even more. "Gambler?"

"What?" the girl's voice demanded. Her voice was still full of tears.

"Thank you for helping us," he said. "We'll be home soon, and then we can get you some ice cream or something while we talk about this."

She was clearly tired, unused to being up all night. She blurted out, half shouting, "There's nothing to talk about! I told you it was okay and you went ahead and now they're dead!"

"You gave us odds. You gave us a percentage. And that's not a sure thing. I rescued you on a sixteen-percent chance, we already know that sometimes the odds get beaten. Sometimes we beat the odds in our favor. Sometimes against us. We do our best," Danny said, his voice leaking sadness, "but sometimes we take a bad roll. That's why we call it gambling, to remind ourselves that sometimes we will lose."

* * *

"You're home early," Danny said, surprised. He held a clipboard while rats ran around his office, typing and checking monitors.

Taylor went up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "Yeah. I think I'm gonna get my GED. Or just take the credit-by-exam tests from the state and then graduate a couple years early. I scanned my teachers today, and now I've got several years of college education in my brain and years of experience teaching the high school subjects." She dropped onto the couch in a tangle of ungainly limbs, and started picking at the cuff of her jeans.

"What, you just download their knowledge?" Danny asked, raising an eyebrow.

She squinted in thought. "Not precisely. But when I'm reading someone, for a few seconds I've got their entire mind inside mine, basically. Now, most of it goes away quickly, I don't remember the entire structure of how they sort colors from textures in their visual lexicon, or every off-handed memory of some friend-of-a-friend anecdote. For the most part I only really retain highlights. Like everything Accord knew about Cauldron and crime and woodworking and stuff. And I know a lot about mechanical engineering and sociology that I didn't know before, but it's mostly the broad strokes and big concepts. But for stuff like high school academics from a high school teacher, that's such a comprehensively conditioned knowledge of the material that it's practically like how you never forget how to ride a bicycle. For a while there, I knew so much about the subjects that I just can't forget it, basically."

He nodded. "Okay. That's weird. But yeah, if you think you're ready to graduate high school, go for it. You're really bright, you're probably ready for college even without your new gift."

He finished signing off on the clipboard and set it on his desk. "So, what do we need to know about Cauldron?"

She rolled her eyes. "God. Okay, first of all they see everything and hear everything, basically. Anytime you say their name or get in their business, just assume that someone has noticed and is watching to see what else you do or say. They have that teleportation thing you saw, portals. They've got their own base, and it's huge and mysterious and they go out of their way to make it look like a hospital or a New Age holistic healing center kind of thing. The person to talk to is Doctor Mother, she's the head of the whole thing. Black woman, near your age, French accent, lab coat. There's other folks working there, mostly parahumans, some of them are scary as hell. Especially Contessa. Brunette, wears a fedora. Rarely talks. Can't be beaten. She's the trouble-shooter and problem-solver, also bodyguard and enforcer and assassin. They sell superpowers, not cheap, Accord had a working deal with them, automatic bill pay and stuff. No idea where the formulas come from, yet. And yes, they have a lot of test subjects that they sometimes release with no memory."

Danny nodded. "Okay, its good to have all of those facts in one place. But tell me what they're like. Impressions, tone, corporate culture, things like that."

"Dry, analytical, utterly ruthless," Taylor rattled off. "The doctor can discuss the most blood-chilling subjects with clinical detachment. She's got plans within plans and wheels within wheels, working towards something very very big. Contessa and the doctor are more partners than it would seem at first glance, rather than superior and subordinate. Accord never saw many people, either it's a very small operation or they insulate most of the operation from outsiders. It's a world-spanning conspiracy that has to control billions of dollars, but most of what he saw was the same three or four people, lots of empty halls, and three or four parahumans that were either brain-damaged or brainwashed."

"Did the doctor ever mention where her degree came from?" Danny asked.

She rolled her eyes. "No, dad, that never came up in conversation when they were negotiating millions of dollars for deadly half-tested superpowers from shadowy conspiracies."

"Or what powers she has?"

"Well, yeah," Taylor blinked. "She doesn't have any. But, she's got other capes to do everything for her."

Danny rolled this around in his head and considered everything. "So, we absolutely need to keep everyone from finding out what your powers are," he said. "There's tons of people in this world that would kill you preemptively just because of a million-to-one chance that you'd learn their secrets. And tons more people that would kidnap you and force you to learn their enemy's secrets, then kill you."

"Not to mention the way you got me involved in a campaign against a massive superpower conspiracy that is famous for killing people to keep its secrets," Taylor pointed out. "I'm surprised they haven't sent Contessa after me already."

"Hmm," Danny mumbled, turning back her direction. "That's an interesting unanswered question."

She raised an eyebrow. "I don't actually need mindreading powers to get you with piercing insights, you know."

He chuckled, and picked up the clipboard again. "True enough. I think for my own good I should get out of here and go check out the premises."

"And I'll head up to our apartment," Taylor said, pulling herself upright. "Maybe get some more training in with Uber."

Danny paused in the door. "What is he teaching you and Gulliver these days?"

"Martial arts," she answered. "He's basing it off of aikijitsu for stance, movement and turns, as well as counters and reverses. The striking portion is mostly Muay Thai, the Eight Limbs variant. We incorporate parts of Capoeira for recoveries, sweeps and dodging, and also Krav Maga's takedowns and disarms. But the part that surprises me is how much time he spends drilling me in boxing. Just jab-jab-cross combination, over and over, for hours."

"Jesus," Danny said. "I think I've heard of half of those. What does he even call that program?"

"Leet Kune Do."

Danny threw his hands up, grinning with amused exasperation. "Of course he does. Get outta here, I'm gonna tour the premises."

He walked around, and part of him was examining the place and the practices and the personnel, but part of him was turning over a dozen conversations he'd had recently. Things had gotten complicated in some weird ways he had not anticipated. For one thing, the conversations with Squealer through the bulletproof glass of her minimum-security visitor's booth. She was apparently ruling the roost in the female wing, through a combination of massive wealth and the sort of mean-spirited cunning that thrives in prison environments. And she had demanded to know why he had testified on her behalf at the lawsuit for her intellectual properties. He had tried four or five ways to explain to her, but he didn't think she ever got it.

The designs she created could change the world for the better, improving many aspects of people's daily lives all across the globe. They could reduce pollution, poverty, starvation, inflation, congestion, waste, and accidents. But if the plans were in the hands of a villain, they could never be used the right way. And if they were in the hands of the Protectorate, they never _would_ be used by the world, only by the Protectorate. But the Protectorate could publicize her work and generate interest. And with her in jail, the interested companies could find her and make a legal contract that helped everyone. And making Squealer rich was just a minor side effect of helping all the rest of the world.

She never did understand what he was getting at, and kept pressing him for his real reasons. Eventually he realized that she was suspicious and he just wasn't speaking a language that she understood. So he asked her to write out a check for a million dollars to the Scavenger Industries pension fund, and then she was happy that she had figured out the catch. It was a bit disappointing that she only understood his motives if he was trying to rip her off. He wondered if she was always broken that way, or if it was a function of her trigger event.

But that was only the lesser of the disturbing visitations he'd put in at a women's prison. There was something chilling to sit down across from Bonesaw and pick up the phone to talk to her. She was wearing a black jumpsuit instead of regular uniform, with the word VILLAIN printed in blood red on her front and back and her legs. The uniform had been cut way down to fit her. She still had the same eerie blonde Shirley Temple ringlets pinned back to frame her face, but she looked somber now, rather than the manic glee that she was most commonly photographed with.

Her incarceration had been troublesome. She was a minor, and quite insane, and almost certainly coerced onto her path by Jack Slash and the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Those all argued for leniency and rehabilitation. But the sheer magnitude of her crimes and her cruelty argued in favor of an immediate death penalty. On the balance, they probably would have sentenced her to the Birdcage, but doing so would mean that every other inmate at that establishment was effectively sentenced to a lingering, torturous death. So the best option after that was to bring her to a maximum-security prison and confine her to solitary imprisonment with mandatory psychological counseling and a constant presence of armed guards. The courts had appointed Panacea to remove all the hidden weapons and augmented systems from Bonesaw's small body, and it had taken her days to return the girl to a normal human biology.

When he sat down across from her and picked up the phone, she had started talking immediately. About what he had said to Jack Slash, and what Jack had said to him. How she had started thinking of herself as one of Jack's victims or Jack's pawn, instead of Jack's friend. And in those moments of waning faith, Jack had taken her through the sewers and talked about how she could modify the Lamia to be more deadly, more dangerous. It was a misstep on his part, and had driven a wedge between them. When Benthic showed up, Bonesaw stood still for a few seconds. Long enough for Jack to get punched out. And she had fought back against Flechette, mostly for appearance's sake, but she assured the Wharf Rat that she certainly could have beaten the Ward girls and escaped if her heart had been in it.

Danny had told her that he believed her without reservation.

She smiled a little at that, and told him how her family had died. How they had died slowly, over and over, brought back from the brink by her talents and ingenuity, only to be tortured back to death's door by the Slaughterhouse Nine, until finally she had given them a merciful death to end their suffering. How Jack had used that opening to drag her along with his schemes and games. How she had thrown herself into it, how she had squeezed every ounce of glee from each terrible killing, because it was the only way to deny the consuming enormity of what had happened to her family, to herself. How she had hid from monsters by becoming a monster. And how fragile that house of cards had been. As soon as she was made to think of herself as a victim again, not a friend, it had all come back. It had unraveled the defense mechanisms that kept her safe from Jack.

He had just nodded, waited for her to continue. But she hadn't, she went quiet. She stared at her hands, cuffed at the wrists and elbows by specially-made manacles, her hands ensconced in gloves that had the fingers stitched together and the thumb sewn to the palm, so she could not manipulate any objects at all. And he had asked her his question: "Are you getting what you need?"

She had said yes, staring down at her bound hands. She did not cry. She was either still too damaged, or already too strong to break down like that. But her voice had cracked, and there had been a glimpse of a hurt little girl. He asked her about her psychiatrist, about the food. He told her about television celebrities and the latest episodes of some cartoon she was a fan of. He told her about how Accord had killed his teammates, and how badly Gambler had taken it. Bonesaw had paused, listening, and nodded slowly. Danny didn't work to emphasize his point about how Gambler had been involved in those events but not at fault for them, but Bonesaw was a clever girl, and she recognized what he was saying.

When his time was up, she asked him to call her Riley. He had watched her escorted away, then went to the bathroom, lifted away his mask and vomited uproariously.

He couldn't help feeling like it was easier to fight Bonesaw and arrest her than it was to visit her in prison and find out about the real person she had once been. But the part of him that saw uses for people and opportunities to seize advantage couldn't help but speculate at how soon she could be found mentally competent by her psychiatrist, and maybe released to the world to use her immense medical genius for more positive ends. At how she would fit in as a member of the Scavengers. He shoved that thought aside, there was no way the rest of the team would tolerate her. Come to that, when he stopped to think about his own feelings instead of logistics, he was pretty sure he couldn't tolerate her either. There was just far too much history, far too many dead bodies in her past.

The main factory floor was humming along, the machines building their parts quickly and efficiently. The humans that walked up and down the line were checking for faults and studying them to fix them if they started to break down. The conveyor belts were right now building replacement parts for the assembly arms, to start stocking up the other factories that Scavenger Industries was buying. In the end, they decided that several factories working for them and several factories just collecting subsidy money was less odious than one factory working for them and a few factories collecting the monopoly subsidy. So, they would be acquiring some of the properties up for sale, and letting the rest sell out for condo developments.

Danny nodded to foremen and workmen as he walked past, and turned his attention to the harbor side of the factory, where dockworkers were putting the finishing touches on the loading docks and the waterline. In a few days, this factory and the rest would all start turning out new products. A lot of their production was standard interchangeable components for the new power armor that the Protectorate was making standard issue. Armsmaster and Dragon were working together to revamp the facility that had made the dragon suits for years, so that it would work more efficiently and create more equipment for Dragon and also for the rest of the Protectorate. And the plan was that after that, the PRT task force soldiers would start wearing power armor in their own missions. So high tech armor components were a growth industry and Scavenger Industries was keeping itself busy. And after that, they had reserved a patent from Squealer's designs for heavy submarines that could open up whole new industries of ocean exploration and construction.

They were going to keep money moving into Brockton Bay for a while, spreading through the poorer districts like the Docks, and the city should thrive for a good long while. As long as no more Class-S threats cropped up. He crossed his fingers and hoped for the best.

* * *

Fifteen minutes ago, the bar had been raucous and rollicking, le bon temps roler-ing like all hell. It was the kind of dive bar that people go to when they want to have fun, with a vaguely Irish decorating scheme and plenty of blonde wood paneling and a running special on draft beers. Brass fittings and pool tables predominated, on karaoke every other Saturday. But right now it was silent as a tomb, all eyes staring at the big screen that occupied the wall across from the entrance. The footage showed a massive figure from a distance, surrounded by dust and smoke and haze, as lightning lashed down from the clouds overhead and buildings toppled from the earthquakes that echoed out away from the creature. It was early morning, pre-dawn, but someone had set up search lights and spotlights everywhere to keep visibility up. The crawl at the bottom of the screen repeated only _Behemoth spotted in New Delhi, Protectorate on the scene,_ over and over again.

Several customers stood up and walked for the door, past the somber crowd that stared at the screen, and more stood up to join them. The people moved solemnly because they knew this pain, the terror that New Delhi was going through. And, shamefully, many of them were glad that it was someone else this time: the last three Class-S events on record had all targeted Brockton Bay, two of those at once. This was the first indication that Brockton was not cursed. The others at Danny's table sat with him as the bar emptied out. He imagined that the people were looking for the other kind of dive bar, the kind that people went to when they wanted to drink away their problems. Kurt and Lacey, Barry, Oni Lee, Uber and Leet, and Pariah, all sat clustered around him and watched for his move. And after checking to make sure the bartender and the waitress were not listening in, he pulled out his phone and dialed.

"Hello, this is Wharf Rat," he said into the cell phone. "Could you put me through to whomever is operating the New Delhi command post? Thanks. Have a nice day," he said by automatic reflex, then winced at the cringey inappropriateness of the words. He recovered when the phone transferred to someone new. "Hello Chevalier. This is Wharf Rat, from Brockton Bay. Yes, I understand. I just want to point out that I was not alerted or invited. I was wondering if this was an oversight or a deliberate slight." He paused, and then snorted to suppress a sharp retort of laughter. "Hm! Okay then, I'm going to be right here watching from my side. Tell Tattletale I said hi, and could you transfer me to Eidolon? Yeah, he'll take my call."

"Tell him I said hi," Pariah said. She had been one of the inner circle in the wake of the Leviathan victory, alongside Eidolon.

"Hey, Eidolon, it's Rat," Danny said casually. "I've got Parian here, she says hi. Yeah, Pariah now. I know, it sounds a bit grim but honestly she's really owning it and making it fit her. Uh huh. Well, I was kind of looking forward to hanging out again soon, but when I wasn't called in for the Behemoth attack I was concerned that people were snubbing me. Well, yeah. Yeah, Chevalier said that it's because everyone felt bad about how they'd left me high and dry during the Slaughterhouse Lamia catastrophe, and nobody wanted to be the one to call me and ask me for help. Personally, I don't think the story rings true, because even after I called them myself, Chevalier didn't suggest that anyone teleport me in. So yeah, I'm pretty sure there's hard feelings."

"Dumbasses," Kurt supplied. "Seriously, you'd think they'd want to bring back the dream team that killed Leviathan."

"Well, Flechette was the keystone for that whole operation," Uber pointed out. "And she's told them not to call her for any more Endbringers. If she's not giving an encore, there's no point to the rest of them."

"Well, yeah you need a new plan," Danny said. "No, like back to the drawing board, you can't just adapt what worked last time. Uh huh. Okay, so you're trying to pull together a power to call Scion, right? Like we discussed? Well good. Uh huh. Wait, tell me more about that, I'm curious to hear this. Of course this is a good time, duh, it's not like you're doing anything important," he said, inflecting his tone with sarcasm.

"Kinda cool that the boss is so close to Eidolon," Leet said.

"They talk all the time," Barry said, sipping his beer. "Apparently Eidolon doesn't have a lot of friends, even on his own team. And you know Danny, he's everyone's friend."

Leet raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, I watched him kill literally thousands of monsters. Last week he killed a criminal kingpin in Boston. I met him when he graciously spared us from his purge of Brockton's villains. It's hard for me to see him as anything so homey or earthy as 'everyone's friend', just my own perspective."

"Whatever," Barry said. "You'll get to know him."

Danny leaned forward. "So, you keep getting into these super-dangerous battles for enormous stakes, because when you first started out that sort of thing made you more powerful. And you want that back. I get that, I do, Eidolon. But dude, lemme ask the hard question: is it working? Are you getting what you want?" Another long pause, and he sighed. "So, you gotta try something new, my man. Don't keep trying the thing that doesn't work. What? Man, you're Eidolon. You've got whatever powers you want. Identify the problem, and get the power that solves that problem, piece of cake. If you need your powers charged up, then don't dink around with trying to get a feeling, just charge your powers up. Yeah. Yeah, uh huh. Well, you've got Behemoth rampaging around. Get yourself the ability to absorb his energy and channel it into your powers. He's got raw power to spare, but he doesn't have your versatility."

"How's the Scion thing going?" Lacey asked in a hushed voice.

Danny put his hand over the mouthpiece. "It's harder than we expected, he's had to re-try like three times already." He turned back to the phone. "Sorry, what? Yeah, I've got a television here, we're watching. Okay, just call us back when you can, okay? Oh, and the whole gang says hi. Maybe when your done you can shoot over here and meet us for a drink." He hung up the phone. "Well, let's see what happens next, shall we?"

"Sounds like Eidolon's got problems of his own," Pariah said, sipping her soda.

"He's not getting any younger," Danny said, shrugging. "Though, now that I think about it, I have to wonder why that is. Certainly he can make himself younger and stronger again? Anyway, apparently he's been on booster shots to keep his power levels up, for quite a while now. But he was really sure that all he needed was a big enough fight and he'd overcome his psychological block and unlock the rest of his power."

"Is that a thing with you guys?" Kurt asked. "Like, psychological blocks and performance issues?"

Leet snorted. "Not that I've ever heard of. Like, ever. Sure, our frame of mind can make a difference, like anyone else. Insecurity or depression can make people slower, less intelligent, even physically weaker. But not a lot, it's within a margin of error. And parahumans don't just lose their powers because of emotional conflicts or whatever. Nah, I think what Eidolon's been trying to do is a lot more like trying to fix your car with the power of positive thinking. It's a nice idea, but eventually you need to actually solve the problem for real because that shit doesn't work."

"Oh, hang on, it's starting," Uber said, nudging his oldest friend. The watched on the television as Eidolon drifted forward, towards Behemoth. He was wearing armor fitted and colored to look like his original costume, with the green cloak and the green lights filling the hood. Blue lights shone from his feet, where the antigravity panels were worked in, allowing him to fly without dedicating one of his three powers to that. Lightning struck him directly from above, but there was no exit stream from him to the ground. He flew forward at a steady pace, further into the thick of the hellscape that surrounded the Endbringer. More lightning struck him, and his body seemed to swallow it up, grounding it out. And then another bolt struck, and stuck. It lashed down at him from the clouds as if pinned in place, flicking all about the cloud layer as if to try to escape, or as if harvesting the rest of the electrical energy into the cloud to stream into Eidolon. The lightning strikes around them began to slow, to stagger, to soften. The forest of lightning strikes that surrounded New Delhi began to thin out as the one hero diverted them all into himself and absorbed them.

Behemoth turned, ponderously, to face the hero. The team of Behemothkillers that the Protectorate had put together seemed mostly intent on slowing the monster down and mitigating the damage it could do. He could see the merit of that strategy, Behemoth was particularly hard to fight against. The beast could control or project any form of energy, so targeting it with energy attacks was worse than useless. And since nearly any material object could be melted or blasted to pieces and destroyed, affecting it with non-energy attacks was often useless or suicidal. Danny could see a reddish glow that seemed to slow everything inside of it. In addition there were chains lashing out of the ground to try to pin Behemoth's legs down, occasionally forcing the slope-backed gargantuan to drop one horn-fingered hand to the ground for balance. The chains were melted over and over but they kept reforming and reappearing, slowing the creature down further. And the ground was sloping around him, forming a crater that he was forced to work his way out of. Whatever he had come for, he was making little headway. But slowing him down might contain the collateral damage he could inflict, but it also focused that same collateral damage. When it finally had its feet shifted it pivoted from its thick waist and pointed a hand that looked like fingers burned down to blades and claws, and fired out a bolt of lightning as thick around as a subway train straight at Eidolon.

The bolt struck and stuck like the other, pouring energy into the man at an incredible rate. Behemoth pulled back, but the flow kept streaming. It moved differently in the air, less like something forced forward and through, and more something pulled and siphoned away. Behemoth shifted his feet, ponderously, slowly, each movement costing him several seconds. The other hand was brought to bear, and it gouted flames that seemed to boil the air itself. Blue-white and too bright to look at directly, they punched out from Behemoth into Eidolon, and they were pulled into his body. The camera was far away, but from this angle it looked like Eidolon was laughing, his head tipped back as he guffawed. The flames did not stop, they siphoned out of Behemoth's well of energy and into the hero. Eidolon dipped low to the ground, and the seismic shocks that rattled the ground began to slow and still as well, the energy of the vibration pulled up out of the ground and into Eidolon.

Behemoth opened his mouth to roar, a blast of sonic energy that could pulverize buildings. But when it hit the green-hooded man, it did not pulverize. The cone of terrible noise contracted, focused, as he pulled in the edges of the blast towards himself to absorb the full measure of Behemoth's mighty roar. The monster lurched off balance, and it tried to close its mouth. But the massive blast of the roar would not abate, would not still enough for it to shut its mouth. Flames and lightning and seismics and sonics all poured out of Behemoth and into Eidolon. So it tried something new: it charged him. A detonation went off at Behemoth's feet, a vast concussion powerful enough to launch the monster out of the crater and away from the chains, out of the slow-time field. It rolled in the air, and the streams of energy fleeing the monster towards the hero did not stop, merely bent around awkwardly in the air to continue their flow.

It closed the distance, and when it stood Eidolon was too close, he was inside the thirty-two-feet threshold that Behemoth could ignore the Manton effect, channeling his powers directly into the body rather than directing them through the air. Volcanic heat blossomed inside Eidolon, enough to char him immediately to ash. But he was unaffected, the heat was absorbed instantly, harmlessly. Behemoth staggered backwards, trying to exit the radius, even as lightning and fire poured from its hands, and its mouth channeled forth a constant sonic blast into the hero. And then it melted the ground under its feet, and began sliding down into the molten pool of lava, escaping into the earth. "Holy crap," Barry said. "He's chasing it off all by himself, without Scion's help. It's only been fifteen minutes, and Behemoth the Herokiller is already retreating."

"I don't think Eido is willing to let him go that easy," Lacey said. "Check it out."

The green-cloaked man thrust one hand out, low to his waist, then gestured upwards, and the molten lava pool of Behemoth's creation was ripped upwards into the air to hang suspended. The fire and sonics and lightning continued to pour out of the inscrutable monster, now joined by laser beams firing out of the eyes. And then Eidolon began gesturing again, swatting back and forth. Cooling magma was knocked clear by a vast telekinetic force, as if dusting off a titanic doll in the hands of an even greater invisible giant. And then the invisible giant began tormenting its doll. Eidolon's hands mimicked a motion, and Behemoth's arms were rotated upwards, backwards, down, and forward, over and over. The motion would have shattered most humans' shoulder joint, but Behemoth had a different body, built on layers and not structures. The rotation had no joints to break or tendons to rupture. But, it did stretch the different layers at different rates, forced the strata of its body to disconnect internally. Faster and faster, round and round, until something gave way and Behemoth's arms fell off. The massive thick brutish limbs slid away like massively padded gloves off of a stick figure, leaving only whip-thin spindles of shiny silver projecting out of the sides of the massive muscular body. And those spindly arms were still pouring out the energy that the man was absorbing. If anything they seemed brighter now, as if the flow was increasing or as if the giant arms had been slowing the process by insulating the source.

And then the giant began turning the doll's head, twisting it around and around. The flesh stretched, one way and then the other, faster and faster until the neck began to change consistency, the layers separating. Then Behemoth unloaded its arsenal, desperate to put an end to this. It exploded, a harsh actinic glare as it went nuclear and wiped out everything in a surprisingly small radius. When the explosion reached Eidolon, it paused, without the energy to expand further. And then the white orb of the continuous detonation, a nuclear weapon firing constantly in a blast like the sun brought to Earth, began to deform and deflate. The sides away from Eidolon collapsed in, the explosion focusing to project all of its energy into Eidolon, just like the lightning and fire. It was a desperation gambit, hoping to overwhelm the parahuman's absorption, but that was a futile gesture. And then Behemoth's head fell aside, dark and bulky and hollow, the open neck of it showing where the inner layers had come apart. A dozen ore more of the outermost layers still clung together, looking like a disembodied head, with only a deep divot in the center showing the center layers that were still attached to the monsters.

The news camera in New Delhi could no longer make out what was happening to Behemoth, though the light was dimming as Eidolon began absorbing the nuclear flash along with the blastwave and the nuclear heat. The massive black body fell to the ground now, the wounds at the shoulders and neck showing the empty space inside where Eidolon had extracted the core of Behemoth from its visible body. Green flashes were going off inside the white light that surrounded the monster, and they all sat on the edge of their seats watching the second Endbringer being laid low. The bell above the door chimed as someone walked in, and the green flashes inside the white light began to join together into something spidery and electric.

"You know there's a fair amount of signal delay between New Delhi and here?" said the man who had just walked in as he plopped down at an empty seat between Lacy and Uber. "Be cool guys, I'm just one of the gang, all right?" They all stared at him with open mouths, too stunned to speak or shout. Fortunately the barstaff was too engrossed to notice this exchange.

Eidolon turned and stared at the television. "Okay, so I shut off the telekinesis and switched to a new power here, one that let me remove his invulnerability to his own energy. I was absorbing, and siphoning, all the energy that he could produce, and then I turned his Manton overrides around on him, so that he could actually be damaged by his own powers. And that started breaking down his inner layers, right, all the way down to the actual core, the bit that actually goes nuclear. So when it went off like Leviathan's, I just absorbed that blast like the rest and, ah there you go," he said, gesturing as the Eidolon on screen hung in the air, with nothing in front of him but fine ashes sifting down to the ground, the last traces of Behemoth nothing but the discarded flesh. And then the cloaked figure vanished without a trace himself, teleported away. The man at their table turned back around, grinning. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"Holy shit," the bartender said, staring.

"Holy shit," Leet echoed.

Pariah took a sip of her drink. "People are going to ask why you didn't do that years ago," she said.

"Because shut up, that's why," Eidolon snorted at his own joke. "But seriously, I'm going to tell them it's because nobody before Tattletale was able to figure out how to kill an Endbringer. We always wasted time trying to beat them up like they were a monster, and not a nuclear power source hiding inside a monster. We wasted time trying to make them bleed, instead of doing damage that mattered."

"Good plan," Kurt said, clearly awestruck and glowing with hero-worship for the weedy potbellied man. "You've thought about this?"

Eidolon shrugged. "Half of all I think about it, is fighting Endbringers. All right, you guys sit tight I'm going to get a drink." He stood up and went to interrupt Duffy's rapt stare at the television to get himself a draft beer. He paid with a fifty and told the bartender to keep the change.

"Holy shit Eidolon's drinking with us!" Barry hissed under his breath.

Danny nudged the man with his knuckles, a gesture of a punch with no force at all. "Don't blow this for him, be cool and just hang out with him, all right? He's earned the right to be a normal guy for a night."

"He's earned whatever he wants," Uber chuckled. "If he wants a quiet night with beer and us assholes, I say let him have it."

Eidolon sat back down with a mug of amber and a frothy top. "I hate parades," he said, taking a sip. "Keys to the city, champagne galas. Where I come from, we celebrate with a beer." Without his mask muffling his voice, his accent was very small-town Southern, diluted from years living in New York with his team.

"Okay, but you gotta spill how you did that," Leet urged him, almost trembling.

Eidolon grinned as he set his glass down. "You saw it, I drained his energy off and then used it against him. I don't know how long I'm going to be able to keep this charge, but right now I can switch powers in just a couple seconds, and it's awesome. I wasn't even this strong when I first started as a hero, so it's exactly what I needed. I'm hoping that this jumpstarted my powers to a new level, but I could deal with the disappointment if I'm back to normal by tomorrow morning."

"He could deal with the disappointment," Uber laughed, nudging Eidolon with his elbow. "Get a load of this guy!"

Barry scrunched his forehead. "Is there some way you could store the energy for when you need it? Like a battery or something?"

"Hmm," Eidolon considered it. "I suppose it's worth a shot... okay, I'm working on that now, and I guess in the next few days we'll know if it's working or not. Okay, so what's up with him?" he said, nodding towards Oni Lee.

"I'm just quiet," Oni Lee said.

Danny clapped a hand on Oni Lee's shoulder. "He's had a tough year. Brainwashed, made to work for villains, recovered, brainwashed again, infected with fourteen psychotic villain brains, brainwashed again, recovering slowly again, with a bunch of new powers that he never asked for. And, he's even mixed up in my business, and you know how weird and frustrating that can get."

"I'd be the quiet type too," Eidolon said. "I respect it. The more I talk the more I make an ass of myself, I should spend more time quiet. So Danny, when are you gonna take me up on my invitation to hit up New York? We still have tons of rats we'd like to get rid of, if you recall."

"Oi youse guys," the bartender Duffy said. "Wrap it up and pay yer tabs, I'm closing early tonight on account of Eidolon killin' that Endbringer. I gotta celebrate too, ya know."


	20. Chapter 20

"Hey dad," Taylor said, opening his door. The light from the hallway fell past her in a long line across the bedroom. "Did you know that Eidolon's crashing on our couch?"

"Yeah, I told him he should stay over," Danny said. "He was going to try flying, but he was all wobbly and the dude can knock down a plane by accident. And god knows what would happen if he tried to teleport drunk."

"Okay. So, did you know that Eidolon got his powers from Cauldron?" she asked.

Danny sat bolt upright. "Motherfucker say what?"

"We'll chat about that later," she said. "But first, he ought to get home. There's people on the news speculating that he's dead because he didn't stay for the celebrations last night."

Danny sighed. "Damn. Okay, yeah, I guess a figure like Eidolon can't just switch to civilian clothes and help his buddy drink a couple cases of beer without some kind of fallout. You get some coffee started, I'll wake up our guest."

"Wake him up carefully, he swallowed a nuclear explosion yesterday and I wouldn't want him startled."

Danny was in flannel drawstring trousers and a white t-shirt when he shook the world's penultimate hero awake. "Rise and shine, Eidolon," he said. "There's coffee."

The potbellied man mumbled something inarticulate but pulled himself halfway out of the afghan and managed to mostly sit up. "Uh. What time is it?"

"Quarter to ten," Danny said. "You've been off the grid for like sixteen hours, the Protectorate is trying to keep people from realizing how scared they are. We need to get you back there so they can call off the search party."

Eidolon nodded. "Kay. Oh. Okay, the battery idea didn't work, I'm back to regular power. Oh well, at least I got Behemoth. He's the one I always really wanted to get, he's killed so many people and yesterday I finally got payback. Now I just need to figure out what I'm gonna do about the Simurgh. She doesn't create huge amounts of energy for me to steal. And, she has immense precognitive powers, anything we try to do she's already countered before we start. She's immune to the usual conflicts where you can cancel out one precog with another precog."

"Well, there's always plan B, calling Scion," Danny pointed out, and offered the man a hand to haul him up to his feet. "Or try throwing a field of normalized physics over her, so that her core explodes itself in one shot and she dies. Or a power specifically to block out precognition, some way to blind her thinker powers."

"I should write these down," Eidolon said. "You think of these things so easy, and I just... don't."

Taylor walked in and pressed a mug of coffee into Eidolon's hand. "Drink up," she said.

The hero looked into the cup. "Cream in this?"

"A small splash, and two sugars."

He made a face. "Well, good enough I guess." He took a drink, and sighed. "Not too hot, not too cold. Even with cream, that's good coffee."

"We should visit you sometime soon," Taylor said, smiling. "I'm sure we'd love New York. And besides, my dad's doing this thing where we go to neighboring cities and take on threats that are going to attack us before they get the chance. We already got Boston cleared out, and New York is probably next on the list."

Eidolon chuckled. "If you come to my city to beat up villains, you gotta give me a call so we can ride together."

"Sure thing," Danny said, slapping the other man on the back.

Eidolon finished his coffee, set down the cup, and disappeared after a minute of goodbyes. Then Danny turned to his daughter. "Okay, so spill it."

"It's worse than you think," Taylor sighed. "Eidolon's in constant contact with Cauldron, they made him and he works for them. And that goes ditto for Legend and Alexandria."

"Damn," he said, stunned.

"Oh, and Alexandria is also Chief Director Costa-Brown of the PRT," the girl said. "You know, the organization set up to police the Protectorate and other parahumans to make sure that they don't get authority over humanity, like Piggot was so crazy about? Yeah, their high lord and master is a cape. It's like.. everything is corrupt, and it's always Cauldron doing it. I am so ready for this to be over with."

Danny sighed, and ducked his head, his fingers stroking at his temples as his hand covered his face. "Great. If there were no other reasons to hate Cauldron, there's the fact that because of them Piggot was right all along."

"Hey now, let's not jump to any wild conclusions there," Taylor said. "I'm sure that even if she was right, she's still wrong."

"Be that as it may," Danny sighed, setting his hand back on his hip. "It looks like our next mission is heading out to New York City. I'll check in with Gambler and see who else we might need to clean up as long as we're there. But this is going to be a hard conversation to have, bracing the Chief Director of the PRT and Alexandria at the same time. But if we're going to un-wedge Cauldron from the Protectorate, we need to start with her and work downward from there."

"This is about those orders that Battery got during the Slaughterhouse Lamia catastrophe, isn't it? The ones where she was supposed to make sure that Shatterbird got free."

He rolled his eyes. "You really are a mind reader."

"You know I wouldn't-"

"I know nothing of the sort," he said. "I have been assuming that you've been reading my mind since you got those powers. I wouldn't ask you to restrain that part of yourself, any more than I would want someone to tell me just to not use my own powers."

"But your privacy-"

"I would be a hell of a hypocrite if I controlled this many rats, this many eyes, and still wanted you to make special considerations for my sense of privacy," Danny laughed wryly. "I sweep the city to make sure that nobody is abusing kids or robbing houses, to make sure that every death is either natural causes or an accident. I get into people's lives and snoop around constantly. Thoughts aren't any more sacred than people's words or actions."

She made an exasperated noise. "Well, maybe there's things about your thoughts or memories that I don't want to know!"

"Sofia Loren," he said, holding her eyes.

Taylor threw her hands up and walked back out of the room without another word, and he just grinned as she left.

* * *

"Italian mafia, sure, Russian mafia, of course," Eidolon chuckled. "I've run across the Hungarian mob and the Greek underworld, a Tunisian crime family, Tongs and Triads and Yakuza, cartels from almost half of South America, and plenty of home-grown local criminal gangs. But I have never heard of an Estonian mafia."

Wharf Rat chuckled along with him as he filled out the paperwork. "I know, right? But my precog assured me that in about six months the pressure here in the Big Apple would get to be too much for them, and they'd move to Brockton Bay to find greener pastures. And after a series of skirmishes they'd start a series of firebombings and chemical-weapon attacks to try to kill my rats, and take out a lot of civilians at the same time. Easier to nab them here where they were confined to just a few blocks of territory."

"At least you didn't level any buildings this time," Eidolon joked, punching the other man in the arm. It was a stronger punch than one would expect after having seen the man beneath the mask. He was in full costume, as were all the Scavengers, but the NYPD precinct was going on about its business as if everything was normal. It was part of the New York culture to be utterly unfazed and unflappable; if Mecha-Godzilla arose from the waters the citizens would complain about rubberneckers screwing up traffic. He looked around at the visiting team. "So, what's with all the black-on-black?"

"It's a collapsible design," Pariah said. "I can pack some of my telekinetic power into it to help protect my allies. Plus, it makes us hard to distinguish from each other. More confusion to the enemy. Like, if an enemy is super-strong and brings massive blunt force trauma, I want them to attack my projections and not Panacea, they're fully invulnerable to the only attacks that might hurt her, and vice-versa. We're not really the sort of hero team that wears bright colors and poses for photos, no offense."

"None taken. You guys are more of a covert strike force, I guess," Eidolon said, shrugging.

Panacea snorted. "And if Pariah is going to be a little less modest, she'd point out that the fabric itself is not that run-of-the-mill. We've had some upgrades. Carbon nanotubes worked into the cloth, makes it a hell of a lot stronger and more resistant to cutting. The nanotubes themselves are cheap and easy to work with, they're an industrial byproduct. But actually working with them in any useful capacity is almost impossible.. unless you've got someone whose telekinetic control over fine fibers is as precise as Pariah's."

"And I can't wait to gloat a little bit to Armsmaster," Leet said, grinning. "Seriously, working with carbon fullerene is like one of the holy grails of material sciences. If we can stage them up the right way to make it easier, then Pariah may wind up upgrading all those fancy Protectorate armors. And not a small upgrade either, but a really big upgrade. See, Uber explained to me how we can use a mesh of -"

"Okay, I'm done here," Danny said, setting down the pen. "That's the Estonian mafia formally arrested, and my statement logged and notarized alongside all the physical evidence we provided. Let's get outta here, yeah?"

The rest of the Scavengers stood from their seats and got ready to move out. They moved together like a paramilitary unit, and as soon as they were in motion their hooded costumes blended together and they became a mass of black-on-black. Eidolon instantly lost track of who he had been speaking to, and he was certain that somehow there were more of them now than there had been a short while ago. And at least one of them was teleporting around, moving from one side of the group to the other. Eidolon had not seen many capes that could work like that, and he was reminded eerily of the Yangban.

They walked out the front door to the PRT van that was parked by the street. Normally they only saw vans like this when they were throwing villains in the back to be secured and transported to the PRT offices and referred to the courts from there. But today it was their ride around the city, Eidolon had made the arrangements shortly after they touched down. They climbed up the back ramp and sat on the benches that were somehow even more uncomfortable than the seats in the precinct house. There were only two yellowish overhead bulbs as they adjusted themselves. They didn't really settle in until after Pariah had given them all some telekinetic cushioning. Eidolon climbed in with them and floated in the middle of the van's cargo compartment between the two benches, sitting cross-legged in the air.

"So, you said back to the PRT headquarters?" Eidolon prompted.

"Yeah," Wharf Rat said. "So, how've you been? It's been a few days since the Behemoth fight, any change?"

The green-cloaked man nodded as the truck lurched into motion. "Yeah, actually. It seems that my response time to change powers has improved, and probably my output power as well. So while I lost most of the energy from Behemoth, it looks like part of the benefits actually did stick around. So now the Protectorate's anti-Behemoth response team has been disbanded with honors, and now we're taking aim at the Simurgh. Literally. There's word going around that they're going to try to shoot her out of orbit, she's the only one who rests up between attacks where we can get at her. They're just trying to lick the problem of keeping her from dodging, she's pretty slippery."

Benthic spoke up before her father. "Could you keep us looped in on your Simurgh countermeasures? Gambler told us that we'd be interacting with her, and we'd like to keep up-to-date on issues dealing with her."

"Sure thing."

"Yo, is anyone going to address the elephant in the room?" Uber blurted out. "The Endbringers spent years threatening cities or nations, unstoppable by anyone but Scion himself, and the last two attacks have ended in dead Endbringers? Like, dozens of defeats, and then two kills in a row? That's just.. man, when I was growing up one of the things you could really count on was that the Endbringers don't die, they barely get hurt."

Parian shrugged. "What? Nobody knew how to do it before. Now we know how. Pretty straightforward."

Eidolon shot her a hard look. "That is a vast oversimplification."

"I thought the elephant in the room was that the boss killed one Bringer, Eidi here killed another Bringer, and Scion himself still hasn't racked up a kill," Salvage said. "For being the most powerful hero in the world, he's not even on the board in this game. Maybe we should save the Simurgh for him, just as a courtesy?"

"Dude," Uber chuckled, shaking his head. "You can't burn _Scion_ like that, you know? It's just _not done_."

Wharf Rat looked back up at Eidolon. "So, what have you been up to lately?"

"More of the same. Goodwill missions, Alexandria calls it. I've just been using my powers to help people like you suggested, instead of just sitting around waiting for someone to beat up. I spent most of yesterday in rural Africa, teleporting around and drilling wells, building irrigation systems for farmlands. The day before I was in the Australian outback, healing people. Day before that, I spent twelve hours disintegrating a gigantic accumulation of trash out in the Atlantic ocean. And you know what? It feels good. I like doing it. It's not what I signed up for, all I ever wanted to do was stop bad guys. But there's more to being a good guy than just fighting bad guys, and I am finding out that I like those parts too. Sure it's boring to vaporize garbage, but I've got a toxic waste dump scheduled for day after tomorrow.. even if it's boring, it needs to be done and that's good enough. Next Friday I'm going to be building schools and clinics. Stuff like that is a huge, huge boost to the self-esteem. People don't just need me during Endbringer attacks, they need me all the time. They'll probably never stop needing me." He was gushing a little, enthused about something other than combat and power for the first time in a long, long time.

"That really does sound pretty cool," Gulliver answered. "That's the kind of stuff I'd want to be doing if I had powers like yours."

"Nerd," Salvage teased the boy, nudging him with an elbow. "I'd be beating up bad guys, starting at the top and working my way down."

Oni Lee leaned forward to speak. "It must be... good... to have those powers. Whatever you want. So you don't have to fight. My powers... they don't do much besides fight. Lots of us, we're the same way. It must be good to be different, like you, like Wharf Rat, like Panacea."

Eidolon cheated a glance at Wharf Rat, as if to say _is this the one you told me about?_ and he got his answer in the return glance. "Yeah, it really is. But I think that the world has a place for everyone, and anyone who wants to help the world can do that, even if maybe they have to think about how to use their powers the right way."

"Oni Lee can create objects from raw materials," Pariah pointed out. "Like knives or more fabric for me. I'll bet that can be used for other things."

Eidolon nodded. "Lots of places I go to help, they've got lots of raw materials and not a lot of finished goods. Or even the poorer parts of this city. They have donation drives for school supplies for kids, you could fix that whole problem in a short time."

Oni Lee sat back, his forehead creasing as he considered it. "That might be nice. I can't fight and train all the time."

"Proud of you," Wharf Rat said, clapping the other man on the shoulder. Gulliver gave him a nod and a matching pat on the shoulder.

Pariah nodded. "It's good to have a plan for when we're done with all this."

Eidolon turned on her with surprise plain to see in his posture. "Wait, done with what?"

"This whole heroic costumed crimefighter thing," the girl said, waving a hand vaguely around. "Maybe some people can do this for a lifelong mission, but other people need a bit more stability in their lives. I don't think I can just keep going to one fight after another, over and over, until the one day I get in a fight I don't survive. Nothing against those who can, Eidolon," she said, hastily. "Obviously. But I'm not wired that way, I'd snap eventually."

"Ditto," Panacea said quietly.

"Yeah," Gulliver added.

"Wuss," Salvage joked.

"I had more fun designing a video game of our own than I had as a villain," Leet offered. Uber nodded as the smaller man kept talking, "I can kind of see myself getting to a point where I want to settle down, want to make plans. Maybe retire in thirty years."

Eidolon shook his head. "I'm honestly amazed. I really didn't expect to learn this about the Scavengers. You guys are one of the most feared teams in any city in America. I heard some water-cooler chatter, people estimating what would happen if you guys took on the Ash Beast or the Three Blasphemies. And now I'm sitting here and listening to you talk about your retirement to go get real jobs."

"We've got a few things to do first," Wharf Rat said, deliberately keeping it vague. "But one of the things about having a high-order precognitive on the team, is that you develop a long view of these situations. We've got some jobs to do that are important enough to keep us together, and after that... we've all earned our time off."

Eidolon chuckled and shook his head ruefully. "I've been at this a long time, and I've learned that there's always another fight and another reason to fight. You think you've hit the high point of your career, and then the next, and the next."

"Maybe not this time," Benthic said, her tone guarded. "We're building to something big, but we can't really talk about it right now."

The Triumvirate hero just nodded. "Okay, I guess I'll have to be satisfied with that. And- oh, and we're here," he said, as the truck bumped to a stop. He stretched his legs back down to the floor as the back ramp lowered and the doors opened, and walked out while the Scavengers unhooked themselves from their seat belts. "Why don't you come on in? I think you guys will be really interested in how the teams are organized here. It's all about-"

"Sorry," Wharf Rat said. "But we should check in with the PRT offices, instead." His voice sounded genuinely apologetic. The rest of the Scavengers tensed up.

"Well, that's a surprise," Eidolon said, huffing a laugh. "You've rarely had anything to say to any of them before!" He seemed to pick up on the suddenly strained atmosphere and tried to deflect it with a bit of levity. It fell flat.

Danny cleared his throat. "I know. But this is kind of important. Something I need to say to the Chief Director." His tone made it clear he didn't want to be doing this to his friend.

"I see," Eidolon said. "I'll make sure that she sees you then." His face was hidden behind his mask, just as much as Wharf Rat's was. But the tones of voice were those of one man who regretted having to give bad news, and the anxiousness of a man who is growing all-too-certain that he knows what that bad news is.

Wharf Rat walked up the stairs to the front doors, while Eidolon spoke into his comm unit to request a channel to the PRT offices.

* * *

"Chief Director Rebbecca Costa-Brown," Wharf Rat said, as he walked into the office. "Thank you for meeting us."

"My pleasure," the woman said, though a bit woodenly. "It's not really our policy to meet with unaffiliated heroes, or rogues, but you've earned some consideration with your contributions."

"Indeed," Danny said. "And god knows, you have too. But for all the good you've done for the Protectorate, and all the good you've done for the PRT, it's time to choose."

She blinked in surprise. "I beg your pardon?" she said. If she was not actually surprised, she was a more-than-proficient actress.

"Back in Brockton Bay, when you arrived to help fight Leviathan," Wharf Rat said, sitting down across from her desk, "I had rats all through the room so that I could keep track of what people were doing and saying. And they also learned the personal scent of every attending hero. Those scents are distinctive, like fingerprints or faces. So when I came within a few blocks of this building and I found a mouse that was close enough to smell this office, I knew who worked here." It was a good cover story, good enough to keep Alexandria from finding out that the Scavengers had a mind reader. "So, Chief Director Costa-Brown, Alexandria, I must ask you to step down."

"I beg your pardon," she repeated. She was not surprised this time, but she was seething.

The rest of the Scavengers spread out behind him, flanked closest by Oni Lee and Salvage, then Panacea and Pariah, then Benthic and Uber, and on the far edges were Gulliver and Leet, a half-circle that arced around her desk. She stood from her chair, looming over Wharf Rat. He seemed comfortable just staring up at her. "Ma'am, this doesn't need to be a confrontation. We can talk this through. We can work out many considerations for your hard and diligent work. We can work out any sort of confidentiality agreement you'd like, policy decisions, your successor, any of those issues. But I really must insist that you resign your posting as the chief director of the Parahuman Response Taskforce."

"That's not acceptable at all," she said, sliding off her jacket and unbuttoning her sleeves. "But you've just been allowed to run hobnailed over all of our policies so far, so maybe you just believe that it's your right to dictate policy to the PRT, to me. It may well be time that just once you learn that the PRT pushes back. Piggot made mistakes, and that allowed you too much lenience. That ends now. You're not leaving this place."

Wharf Rat raised his hands palms forward, a classic surrender gesture. "Ma'am, honestly, nothing like this is necessary. I think you'll find we're fully ready to be reasonable and-"

Alexandria swatted her hand at her desk, and several hundred pounds of wood flew forward on a path that would crush Wharf Rat's legs and leave him crippled. But Gulliver appeared in the desk's path, grown to his fullest size and crouching behind an eight-foot-tall metal shield. The shield took the desk and shoved him back, rocking him on his heels, but the desk was stopped and Wharf Rat was safe. Alexandria launched herself forward, and Gulliver vanished, just as Oni Lee opened up with the Butcher's pain-projection power. The heroine had been invulnerable for decades, only injured a few times in all those years. Nearly nothing could penetrate her skin or bruise her flesh, or even inconvenience her. She had plenty of time to forget what pain felt like. Oni Lee reminded her.

She gasped and staggered back, her brain flooded with the sort of pain that took one's breath away, that numbed the brain and made everything else unimportant. And she had little to no pain threshold as it was. Her hand carelessly swept through her chair and smashed it to flinders, her eyes wide and her breath catching in her throat. Her lungs seized and spasmed, and that was all that kept her from screaming aloud. Her body thrummed with the agony, and then it was over. Oni Lee still stood in place, his hands folded behind his back. "Please," Wharf Rat said, gesturing towards an empty chair. "Just sit down, work this out. It doesn't have to be ugly."

Alexandria whipped her head back and forth to clear the memory of the agony away. Her hair floated around her shoulders like an inky cloud, and her eyes flared with a prevailing rage. "You think I'm just a hitter, a flying brick," she said. "Stronger than anyone else, tougher than anyone else. But nobody told you how smart I am, did they? How I'm able to read people, yes even you, yes even with the mask. I know more about you than you want me to know, and I've memorized your files. And your family's files. Anyone the PRT knows about, I know about. An encyclopedic knowledge of your weaknesses, Hebert." She stomped down, her foot smashing into the floor hard enough that something snapped and gave way, the floor sagging several inches. The Scavengers flailed for balance on the shifting surface, and that was all the distraction she needed to lunge twenty feet to the side, and grab Benthic by the throat. "Now, stand down all your people, or I kill your daughter, _Wharf Rat_. Any tricks, any more pain, and my fingers close. I'll kill her fast, your healer won't be able to help you. Her head rolls on the carpet if you don't surrender."

Benthic's armor was pressing at her throat, the metal dented by the woman's fingers. It was just enough to add a raspy tone to her voice as the girl murmured, low and quiet just for the two of them. "You can still remember how the chemo made your mouth taste, can't you?"

Alexandria dropped the girl like she was a radioactive scorpion. "What the hell? How can you know that?"

"Pan," Danny said, and the giant taloned hand grabbed onto Alexandria's shoulder, and pulled her back while a very human hand emerged from the palm of the hand grasping her. When the smaller hand touched her, the woman went quiet, her system flooded with sedatives that no needle could have injected into her. Panacea, in her massive organic armor, lifted Alexandria and carried her over to where the desk had been, while Gulliver brought around the other chair. The Wharf Rat leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he stared straight at the unmoving, unblinking woman who was leader of the PRT and second in command of the Protectorate, in violation of the charters of both organizations.

"Alexandria," he said, his voice gentle. "You should be able to hear me. You've been given a paralytic, but you're safe. Just please, listen to me. I only came in here with three ways to bring you down. You've seen two of them. I could have signaled Leet instead of Panacea, but you're valuable as Alexandria, you're a great hero for the Protectorate, and if Leet had fought you, you would have died or just never been able to fight again."

"Not like last time, when you only lost an eye," Benthic said, leaning against his chair.

"Indeed," he said. "Now, here's the thing, Ms. Costa-Brown. If I expose you, it's going to hurt the Protectorate and the PRT, a lot. You'll lose a lot of funding and support. If I die and my automatic countermeasures kick in, it's going to hurt the Protectorate and the PRT even more. But if you step down on your own, nobody needs to know. I'm not interested in punishing you for corrupting the organization, I'm just interested in fixing the damage. I know that Cauldron bribed you and indebted you so that you'd do what they want, but the world can't go on like this. Shadow organizations can't just dictate terms to an agency that calls itself "heroes". Now, in a minute I'm going to have my associate here undo your sedation. You're going to be free to move and speak. When that happens, I'm really counting on you to sit still and discuss with me like a civilized adult. Because if you don't, I am pretty sure that we won't be able to sedate you again. We'll have to fight you for real. And I really, really don't want that, Alexandria. I don't want the world to lose Alexandria. But, I am more willing to lose Alexandria, than I am to keep Chief Director Costa-Brown."

He gave Panacea a nod, and she gave one more touch before she pulled her hand back. The head of the PRT blinked a few times, woozily. "I can't step down," she said. "'S impurr- It's important that I stay where I am. Cauldron needs to stay in charge of the PRT."

"Why?"

"I'm not at liberty to say. But it is of the utmost necessity that I stay where I am, as I am," she said, shaking off the last of the drugs and rallying her hostility. "Now, you seem pretty confident that you are in control of this situation-"

Danny sighed. "Ma'am, with all due respect, I made my bones taking down A-list supervillains with nothing but common rats and whatever I could scrape together in an afternoon. I killed an Endbringer with less than ten minutes notice. I killed the Slaughterhouse Nine literally thousands of times over while the Protectorate fell apart around me. Have you considered that I'm now here, with a handpicked team, adequate preparation, tons of resources, and the element of surprise? I don't mean to sound arrogant, but right now the only person that should be confident in your position is fucking _Scion_. Ma'am, you're tough and strong and smart. You're not Scion. Now then, if you can't tell me why it's so important for Cauldron to stay in charge of the PRT-"

Benthic laid a hand on his left shoulder. He paused, as if sizing her up. "You know what? Ms. Rebbecca Costa-Brown, I'm not interested in how important you think it is. This stopped being about your options. Stand down. Resign. Today. Either Chief Director Costa-Brown resigns, or Chief Director Costa-Brown dies and Alexandria dies with her."

Alexandria paused, her eyes narrowed. "She's where you get your information," the woman said. "Some kind of thinker power. She's signaling you right now. What does she know?"

"She knows enough to keep her mouth shut," Benthic retorted.

"And she knows that your justification for supporting Cauldron and manipulating the PRT is bullshit," Danny said. "Do you want to talk openly? Because we can keep dancing around the subject if you like."

"Maybe I drop out of the Protectorate?" Alexandria said. "It's less important than my Director position. And your only real issue is that I'm in both, right? Does it matter which one I drop out of?"

He paused. "Seriously? Actually seriously? No. No, because a big part of the problem is that nobody in the PRT, from the janitor to the technicians, is supposed to be a parahuman. Least of all the Chief Director. Unless... unless you weren't a parahuman anymore?" He turned his gaze towards Panacea.

"You can't..." Alexandria started, and trailed off as she stared into the giant compound eyes and needlelike fangs of Panacea's combat suit. "Can you?"

"It's a moot point anyway," the Wharf Rat said, his voice tired. "You've mistaken my willingness to leave you in the Protectorate for a willingness to give you options here. And you keep taking the most unacceptable option you think you have. Lady, Cauldron is cutting deals with villains that are trying to take over cities. Cauldron is enabling villains who use casual murder and dedicated torture to punish minor infractions. And despite these obviously evil overtures, it is also in control of both the Protectorate that opposes those villains, and the PRT that watchdogs them all. They've poisoned governments, betrayed every ideal that any of us could hold, and are directly implicated in the deaths and suffering of millions. If you can support them, you're not even human anymore."

"It's necessary," Alexandria said, sounding even more tired than him. "We have to."

Benthic cued her helmet's external speakers off, and a private party line just to her teammate's comm units. "Eschaton."

The Wharf Rat nodded slightly to indicate he'd heard. "So, you think that Cauldron is working some larger plan that is so grand in scope that it justifies their actions. Something so big and so terrifying that millions dead is a small price to pay. Something so heavy that you would openly endorse a power-hungry international conspiracy that kidnaps, tortures, experiments on, brainwashes, vivisects, brands, and abandons people en masse. Something that rationalizes their perverting every good that humankind can aspire to."

She glared across at him, her hair still wild, her eyes burning with anger, but her shoulders slouched with resignation. "All of that. Yes."

"And do you have any evidence aside from their word?" he asked.

Alexandria froze, her jaw snapping shut. She looked like a bomb was going off behind her eyes. She finally choked out an answer. "I can tell when people are lying to me."

"Ma'am, you are endorsing an organization that has repeatedly done the absolutely unforgivable and unconscionable, that has done literally everything it could to be as evil as possible, on the strength of your assertion that you can tell when people are lying. Well, you're not the only person in this room that can tell when someone's lying, ma'am. And you've got major doubts, major worries. You're trying to figure out if you've let yourself be duped. You're trying to be sure that you really believe in them and their mission, but you can't shake the feeling that you're just giving them the benefit of the doubt because they have done so much for you that you feel like you belong to them."

"No," she snarled. "No, that's not is real, this is a threat. I've been there and I've seen it."

"Alexandria," he said, his tone gone gentle again. "You've watched these people do everything that is evil in this world. You've watched them commit every crime and violate every trust. And you think that they would not, or could not, lie to you? Betray your loyalty? You already know that they would, you know they've done far worse than this. I need you to decide between what you believe, and what you need to believe."

"You're not going to kill me," she said. "You'll never stop the PRT or the Protectorate from hunting you down. Not to mention Cauldron. You're not bigger than the world, _rat_. You can't escape all of them. If you attack me, you'll die and nothing will stop it." She stood up, and kept rising, her feet dangling above the ruin and wreckage of her desk. "You've got no bargaining position, no room to make a threat. I am going to kill you, or you kill me and everyone else in the world comes after you. This is over, and you're going to lose, no matter what."

Wharf Rat looked over at Panacea. "Are you clear?"

"Yeah, miles away," she said, without turning towards him.

"Great," Danny said. And then he flickered out of existence. And then Benthic, Pariah, Panacea, Uber and Leet, and Salvage all flickered and vanished, leaving behind only small holographic transmitters. Where Panacea had been was a hole in the floor etched by acid, leading to a crawlspace in the building's structure. Gulliver sketched a small salute and then vanished away, and Oni Lee left in an explosion of flames and noise. Alexandria was alone in her office, the floor cracked down the middle, her furniture a shambles. And then she realized that the entire conversation had been recorded. She threw her head back and screamed hard enough that the windows exploded and and the cracked floor settled a foot lower.

* * *

The Scavengers were worming their way out of the utility spaces and into the building's basement, heading for the opened grate to the storm sewers, when Eidolon arrived. There was a flash of green-yellow light that zipped in through a wall, bounced around the room eight or nine times, and then resolved into the floating cloaked figure. "Guys, she is really, really pissed," Eidolon said. "Whatever you said to her, you should not have said it. What's going on?"

"PRT regulations require that no employee should be a parahuman," Danny said, shrugging helplessly. "I figure that goes double for any member of management, and triple for any director, and quadruple for the Chief Director. Quintuple for any member of the Triumvirate, and septuple for anyone who owes allegiance to Cauldron."

"You skipped sextuple," Benthic pointed out.

"I know what I did," he said, patting her shoulder then turning back towards the floating man who could turn this whole plan against them. "C'mon, Eidolon, you've known all along that this was wrong. People were trusting the PRT to be impartial, and you can't abuse that kind of trust."

"The world needs Cauldron, and Cauldron needs to control the PRT," Eidolon said. Even with the mask and hood, one could hear the frown in his voice.

Danny waved the others towards the open grate, without taking his eyes off of Eidolon. "What if they didn't? What if the world doesn't need Cauldron as much as Cauldron needs to believe that it is needed? And what if Cauldron didn't need to own the PRT? Just let me ask: would that be a better world than this, or worse?"

Eidolon brought a hand up under his hood as if to run his fingers through his hair, hampered by his hood and mask and gloves, but the nervous gesture remained. "Wharf, c'mon, you can't put me in this position, it's not fair at all."

"I didn't _put_ you in a position," Danny stressed. "I'm just showing you the position they put you in. All you wanted to do was help people, save people, and they convinced you that you had to betray the world's trust to do it. They told you that you had to help them hurt people, lots of people, and corrupt the most noble institutions in the world. But Eidolon, what if you don't have to? What if there's a better way? We can do this, we can help with this."

"You're going up against _Cauldron_!" Eidolon retorted. "Look, even if I didn't owe them my life and more, it's still _Cauldron_. They're more powerful than you have guessed or imagined, they're in everything, they know everything. If Alexandria and Legend and I stood down, and everyone else stood down, then the core group of Cauldron has at least five members that could take out you and your entire team. Wharf, their _accountant_ could probably take out me and Legend and Alexandria together. This is so, so far from a fair fight. This is not something that you can win, you can't defeat them or kill them."

"I know," Danny said, cocking his head to the side. "That's why I'm going to beat them the best way there is: I'm going to make them obsolete."

"Huh?"

"Eidolon, I"m going to finish what Cauldron has started, so that they can never justify or rationalize the horrors they have committed. So they can never convince decent people like you to condone crimes against humanity for their sake. They hide behind their secrets, claiming that the ends justify the means while they commit atrocities. I'm going to undo _that_ , and that will undo _Cauldron_."

The man in green hung in the air, bobbing slightly on the air currents. He turned away, looking past his shoulder towards the dark brick wall. "Get out of here, Wharf Rat. Get back to Brockton Bay."

"I'll call you later," Danny said. "Oh, and Eidolon? This is a tough time for lots of people. We need to make sure that people don't lose faith. Talk to Legend, make sure he's okay. The Protectorate needs to look strong and noble and untroubled from the outside, and I'll bet that you and me aren't the only ones around that need a friend right now." He ducked low and slipped through the grate, disappearing into the darkness.

* * *

Panacea, Pariah and Salvage arrived on the back of a coal-black horse made of fabric, and it began unspooling itself before they were fully dismounted. The rendezvous was in a blind alley, and the darkness of their uniforms blended into the shadows. "Holy shit, boss, I have rarely seen you make an enemy the way you made an enemy today," Salvage was chuckling. The rest of the team wasn't laughing. "Hey, what are you staring at?" he said towards their back. "No fair putting the midget in back, lemme through!" He pushed past their legs, and stopped to stare at the doorway. "Well, how about that."

It was a doorway hanging in the air, just like the one that they had walked away from after killing Accord. It looked like an optical illusion, it had almost too much depth and detail. It opened onto a gleaming white corridor with recessed lights and gleaming tile floor, a hallway that looked more like a set piece from a sci-fi movie than any actual walkway.

Danny shook his head. "Walk away, and regroup downstairs. This is not a good-faith invitation, it's just a stupid power play. They've deigned to allow us entrance into their waiting room so we can sit around being impressed and intimidated and unsettled by their decorations, that are clearly designed to make an impression. And then when they actually give us their personal attention, we'll be grateful that the great and powerful Cauldron has actually found the time to talk to us. So grateful that we just accept whatever they have to say without question." He signaled for Pariah to start working on the wings again to fly them back home.

The doorway in the air vanished, and another one appeared in front of the Scavengers, barring the way to the street. And this time there was a woman standing in the doorway, a black woman with a white laboratory coat and elegant glasses that complimented her complexion. "The great and powerful Cauldron," she repeated, with a French accent. "That has a ring to it, Mister Hebert."

Danny stared at her steadily. "I'm certain. But you're still posturing and trying to dictate the power dynamics of our conversation," he pointed out, his tone aggravated. "Even when you get called on it, you still can't help it can you? I know you were watching our talk with Alexandria, so you know what I have to say about you."

"Hostility," Doctor Mother said, arching an eyebrow.

He snorted. "And you can't tell why, can you? You're throwing around casual displays of power to cow me and my people, blocking the exits, laying out carefully-calculated threats with a touch just subtle enough that we're supposed to be intimidated but never call you out on them or respond in kind. You back the likes of Coil and Accord, you are responsible for Shatterbird, Siberian and so many more like them. You infiltrated the PRT and perverted its purpose, infiltrated the Protectorate and turned it into a pawn for your schemes. There is nothing so noble or idealistic that you have not cynically influenced it into a hypocritical abomination. You kidnap people wholesale from their homes, experiment on them, torture them, brainwash them, brand them, then sell them off to act as straw men for your paying customers to knock down in easy fights. You have earned the concentrated hostility of the entire human race in all its iterations across the dimensions, Doctor, mine is a pittance compared to what you deserve."

She scowled. "Mister Hebert, what we have done is necessary to-"

"No," he interrupted. "It was not necessary. You don't even particularly care what is necessary. But if you were to be actually honest with us, you might use the word 'expedient'. Or 'convenient'. I know you have lofty goals. Vast goals. But the methods you are using are not necessary. They are just convenient for you."

"Necessary," she reiterated, her eyes narrowing.

"Liar," he said. "Your personal ego is more relevant to your methods than necessity is."

"How do you find that?" she asked, looking genuinely surprised. "What makes you think that I am hiding in the shadows out of egotism?"

He paused. "If I tell you how I discovered this, will you give my words at least twenty-four hours of reflection?"

She stared at him, judging, calculating as best she could. "I have other methods, I could learn without meeting your demands," she said.

"But you're still laboring under the illusion that you're not just an arrogant bully who is leveraging the trust of powerful capes to build a worldwide conspiracy for your own personal aggrandizement," he rebutted. "Take the deal."

"Very well. How do you conclude that my own ego is the subject?"

He cocked his head to the side. "It's really too obvious, and I've already pointed it out. You brand your victims, Doctor. You kidnap them and torture them, even vivisect them. You strip away all of their memories. Up to this point you have an argument that you are doing this for viable utilitarian reasons. You're trying to learn something, you're trying to protect yourself, maybe you claim you're even trying to spare them the memories of what they've lost. And then you brand them. Trainwreck's shoulder blade, Salvage's leg, each time you print them with your logo. If you had never branded them, they would have their own conclusions. They would think they were a natural occurrence. The authorities would conclude that sometimes people undergoing radical trigger events and physical change will also become amnesiacs. Or that they were slipping through a dimensional portal somehow. But Doctor, you _signed your name_ on them so that they would know this was deliberate, so they'd come looking for you. And then you sell them off at a profit despite the fact that you don't need the money at all. The money doesn't serve a purpose, it's just a way for people to prove materially how important your services are. The only explanation that answers all the questions and satisfies all the facts, is that you're a narcissist who wants power and attention for their own sake, and you will say anything or believe anything to get them."

The woman did not make a single move, but the doorway closed up. The Wharf Rat turned to the team, and sighed. "C'mon, let's get back home to the Bay."

"What the hell, boss?" Salvage blurted.

Danny sighed, and his shoulders sagged. "There's people justifying the most evil actions possible. The stuff that Cauldron has done dwarfs the crimes of the Nazis, for god's sake. They're responsible for Shatterbird and Siberian, and all the tens of thousands of deaths caused by them. They are probably singlehandedly responsible for everything that is wrong in the world of parahumans. I literally would not be surprised if they were responsible for the Endbringers. They sowed secrecy and mistrust among the heroes trying to save humanity from the monsters. And they act like it is what they have to do to prevent the Eschaton, the end of the world. It's.. frustrating. Exhausting. Demoralizing. The things they've done to save the human race make me question whether the human race deserves to be saved. For that alone, I have to fight them as hard as I can."

"Do you want me to kill her?" Oni Lee asked.

"Worse," Danny said. "We're going to prove her wrong."

* * *

The wind was coming off the water, cool but humid. Danny sat on the edge of the roof with a beer in his hand, watching another sunset. His legs dangled off the edge, hanging in the air above a four-story drop. The Scavenger Industries factory seemed to suck the heat out of his body, and it was getting obvious that the summer was fading into autumn now.

"Hey boss," Gulliver said from behind him. The young hero walked up to the man's side and sat down cross-legged. He was a stocky kid still, but the planes of his face were etched hard, without baby fat. He had the build of a weightlifter not a sprinter, even dressed in jeans and a windbreaker. "Am I interrupting?"

Danny shook his head. "Nah. I'm just taking as much of a break as I can. Things have been busy lately." He didn't look away from the sunset.

"Sure, the trip to New York," Gulliver said. "Bracing the head of the PRT in her den, that sort of thing. You made a hell of a lot of enemies doing that. I'm sure that was stressful as hell."

Danny snorted and took a swig of his beer. "The Protectorate canceled their orders for all power armor components built by Scavenger Industries. They're trying to hurt our business and our factory, trying to take out their animosity on the people of this city that need jobs. There's not much else they can do at this point, they've already withdrawn all the support and assistance they can. They stranded us when we were double-dipped on Class-S threats, they pulled access to the PRT database. The next step is for them to start trumping up crimes to accuse us of and sending the heroes to take us down, but that only works if they literally don't care whether anyone believes the accusations or not, because they've been caught trying that before and it went badly. So if they're willing to throw away all their credibility, they've got a shot at attacking us, but if they do that it'll split their ranks and sink their whole organization. So, I need to avoid antagonizing them any further or they'll actually do it."

The boy just nodded. A cluster of seagulls circled above them, but when they saw that there was no food to be had they let the updrafts take them further down the shore. "So, that's what it takes for you to stop stepping on their toes," Theo joked.

"Yeah, basically," Danny replied, sharing the wry laughter. "But that's on top of everything else. Working city politics, for instance. I've gotten a copy of Accord's binder to the mayor, and I've been riding his ass to get this thing done. He's not nearly as corrupt as Christner was, but he's very insecure in his position and he needs to be pushed into anything that looks like a political risk. And that goes double for anything that looks like he's letting me dominate city politics. Still, poverty's already dropping, crime is on the decline again, and an early opinion poll is putting Brockton as one of the top cities in America for citizen satisfaction. That, and we're still building up the Scavenger Auxiliary, the second-stringers."

Theo considered that. "I've heard about this. Still not sure what it's for."

"You don't build a backup team with a purpose in mind," Danny said. "It's there for when you didn't expect to need it. But this is even harder than building up the Scavengers, because I have to do it in secret. Lots of moving parts to organize, lots of contingencies to plan for."

The teenager shrugged. "And that's why you're the master planner. Because you can actually keep track of all this. Infinite multitasking. But yeah, it kind of does sound exhausting."

"Both more and less than you'd expect," Danny said. "Let me tell you something. I've got Boston back."

"Pardon?"

"When we went to Boston, Panacea made me up a bunch of repeater rats, enough to cover the city there like I've done here. We were hunting for the Empire, and Accord, and we only had a few hours, so we needed lots of coverage. Then when I left, they were all supposed to disconnect. They were just supposed to transmit my signal to extend my range. But just the other day, a mouse from Boston connected them to Brockton. Apparently after we left, some of the smart mice that had just been born gave the others instructions, and the repeaters started traveling this direction, stretching their range from Massachusetts to New Hampshire until they found us here. So now I've got two entire cities, and a thin bridge connecting them, in my perception. So, I'm watching two cities now not one. And, I've got to deal with the fact that my little rodent minions have the capacity to exert that much independence and forethought. So, if they're as smart as that, is it slavery for me to control them? And what does it mean that the first thing they did was come looking for me so they'd be back in my range? And on top of that, as I review more and more of my work, it looks like a lot of it happens when I'm asleep, like the smart mice are learning what my plans are, and are sending those signals through the repeaters to keep everyone busy even when I'm offline. So I can either worry about what all this means, or I can just be grateful that I can delegate a lot of the work away."

Theo considered this for a bit, his jaw working back and forth as he thought it over. "Damn," he said eventually. "It changes everything if you think that your rats and mice might have independent thought. Even more if they are capable of working a multi-step long-term plan. They're not tools that you have at your disposal, they're soldiers in your army."

"Well, I never really thought of them just as tools," Danny admitted. "I've always tried to keep them safe. But yeah."

Theo pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them. "Sounds like you're taking a lot of responsibility on yourself. A lot of it that you don't have to. Accord's plans, the factory, the union workers, all of Boston, your daughter, the rats themselves, Cauldron, crime in general, the Eschaton... you need to let some of that go."

"I've already let a lot go." Danny heaved a bigger sigh, and finished off the bottle. The sun dipped behind the horizon, and his squint relaxed. "I had been worrying about the environment, and rehabilitation for the villains, and humane alternatives to the Birdcage, and rounding up the remains of the Travelers and the Teeth. I had been worried about that land that the PRT gave to Bitch, just north of the Trainyards. I was worried about Ellisburg, and proactively hunting down Nilbog to eliminate another Class-S threat from the world before he goes too crazy and breaks out to attack the world. I had been worried about ocean oxygenation and the upcoming election. I've already let a ton of stuff go, and pared it down to the important stuff. My friends, my family, and major threats to the world as a whole in the very immediate sense."

Theo just sat on that for a minute, considering his response. "Well, at least it'll be done soon, and you can stop worrying. Nice long vacation, eh?"

"It's a nice idea," Danny agreed. "You know what's stressing me the most? That I haven't heard back from Cauldron. I told them to wait twenty four hours, and it's been weeks. C'mon, it's getting kinda cool out. Let's get inside."

* * *

"So when are you making the announcement?" Danny asked, pitching his voice above the wind.

"Monday morning," Uber muttered, his voice low so his passengers wouldn't hear him speaking on his comm unit. "So don't touch any stocks, or the SEC will tear you apart."

Pariah spoke up. "I was zoning out, what are you guys announcing?"

"Leet and I are selling the factories," Uber told her. "We never really wanted to get into heavy industry, and we've got some tender offers from some investors. We're drawing up contracts for the sale, to make sure they don't fire everyone and try to build condos, _again_ , or anything like that. We're going to be concentrating on our sequel game, and Scavenger missions, at least for the time being."

"It was neat to try our hands as industrialists, but we're just not that into it," Leet added, his voice coming clearly through the comms. "And the sooner we let it go, the better. We didn't need those distractions while we're trying to save the world."

Pariah nodded. "Yeah, I hear you. I've started working on my sketchbook again, I think I'm ready to go into couture designs again. You know, the first time some prima-donna photographer started screaming at me, I was really intimidated. That was before I helped kill Leviathan, Lamia, the Slaughterhouse Nine, Empire Eighty-Eight... I don't think that anyone in the fashion industry has what it takes to push me around anymore."

Danny grinned widely. "I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that. I've been worrying that I've been a terrible influence on you."

"The worst," she said with a straight face and a deadpan voice. "Such a bad influence I had to grow up and get strong just out of self-defense."

Gambler's voice came in over the comms. "Look at all of you, deciding what you're going to do when we're done preventing the Eschaton. Big careers, long vacations. Me, I'm going to the seventh grade. I think I'm the only one taking a step down."

Theo chuckled. "Nah, I'm going to still be in high school. Benthic too. Good ol' Arcadia High."

Panacea's grin was even wider. "I'm graduating this year. I've already got standing full-ride scholarships waiting for me at pretty much any medical school in the country."

"You can heal with a touch," Gambler pointed out. "What would you possibly do with a medical degree?"

"You can't charge people for healing unless you've got a medical degree," Panacea pointed out. "The plan is to heal billionaires for millions of dollars, and heal poor people for free. Set my own schedule, set my own customer list, it is going to be a huge relief to me. No pressure except what I choose to take on myself."

"I'm gonna publish my official memoirs with a ghost writer and do the talk-show circuit," Salvage said. "Maybe become a motivational speaker or something. As soon as this team is broken up and done, I'm gonna sell out good and hard and I'm gonna cash in on the fame."

Gambler laughed. "We would expect nothing less. So, I do think the boss is going to go back to working a real grown-up job and stuff, but what about you Oni Lee?"

The Asian man was quiet for a few seconds. "I think I'll join the Protectorate. Or stick close to Wharf Rat, I'm not sure which."

"The heroes would be lucky to have you," Wharf Rat said. "Okay, how far is everyone from position?"

"Cruising altitude at the flyover states, ready any time at all," Uber said.

"Target's on the scope," Oni Lee replied.

"Any time," Pariah reported.

"Give me the word," Leet said.

"Just waiting on the signal," Gulliver murmured.

"Ditto that," Benthic said.

"I've got him where I want him," Salvage said.

"It's not perfect, but close enough," Panacea checked in.

"Uber, take the first move," Wharf Rat called out.

* * *

Blueblood was sitting comfortably in her custom-made seat in her private jet. The wine was an excellent year, and for once the Kobe beef was actually Kobe and not some jumped-up impostor. And she was surrounded by her personal assistant, her executive assistant, and her bodyguards, all of whom were chosen for their soft-eyed pretty-boy looks and their professional acumen. And she was flying across the country to work an easy job, another coterie of rogues that needed to be persuaded to join the Elite. It should be fairly simple, they had already been thrown out of the Protectorate. It was a good time to be working for the Elite, as Blueblood herself could attest.

And then the cockpit opened up, and the pilot stepped out. He wasn't her usual pilot, she could tell. He was good-looking enough, but rather butch. Tall and broad-shouldered with far too much jaw for her tastes, and muscular rather than slender and waifish. It took her an extra second to realize he was carrying a parachute. He tossed his hat onto a seat, and stood by the door, with one hand on the door latch. "Good afternoon, Blueblood," he said, smiling. "My name is Uber, and I'm with the Scavengers."

"I read your file," she said, calmly. "You're the weakest member of your team."

"Oh, yes," he said, smiling. "I'm one of the only ones that can't punch a wall down, or see far more than I was ever intended to. I'm rated as a Thinker 3, no other classifications. I didn't even bring along any of my tinker friend's creations for an advantage. I can only acquire skills temporarily, so there's nothing I can do that an ordinary human couldn't do with training. But that includes training as a hacker to reschedule your pilot. And training as an infiltrator to get inside your organization's security perimeter. And training as a saboteur to lock the plane's autopilot on a collision course with the Ozark mountains, and unlock this door so that one twist of the handle depressurizes the cabin and blows everyone in here out into the atmosphere to die on impact. You will notice, I hope, that if you try to use your deoxygenation power, it will shut off the plane's engines and assure a crash. And further, that I will not pass out from oxygen deprivation until after I've had time to turn this handle, evacuate myself out of your area of effect, then open my parachute."

"Yes, yes," she said, waving a hand disinterestedly. "You've got me right where you want me. So, shall we negotiate your terms? What do you want to keep me from attacking your city? You already know my conditions."

"I know," he said. "Join you, or die. And lots of other people die too. It's a tough argument to negotiate with. That's why my orders aren't to negotiate with you," he said.

"Really?" she drawled. "Tell me more."

He snorted through his nose. "You've killed tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands. And there's basically no way to make you stop. You got on this plane with the intention of holding an entire city hostage so that my team would work for you. Left to your own devices you'll kill millions of people in your life. So I guess what I'm saying is, there's not a jury in the world that would convict me."

The thin man with the long brown hair parted in the center had finally eased his gun free of its holster without tipping off the big Scavenger, and he half-rose as he pointed the weapon and pulled the trigger. It wasn't a conventional weapon, it used compressed air to fire a razor-sharp dart. Bullets would not work when Blueblood had her power active, there was no oxygen reaction to explode the gunpowder. So under threat the usual plan was for Blueblood to use her power to knock out everyone but herself and shut off all weapons while her bodyguards killed whomever they could with their modified weapons.

But compressed-air weapons were not quite as lethal as firearms. And the big man moved with shocking speed, using his free hand to bat the flechette out of the air like it was a softball. The blonde man with his long hair in a sweeping wave lunged with a long knife, using the moment of distraction, but Uber's foot crashed into his face with enough force to stop the man in the air and leave him crumpled on the floor. The bodyguard had seven black belts, but Uber had made it look easy to out-fight him, like a cheap extra in a kung-fu film, the kind of stuntman whose job was to fall down after one hit.

"Okay, now that we've got that sorted," Uber said, picking up the parachute, "I'll be on my way. Toodles, bitch."

"Wait!" Blueblood belted, sitting forward from her chair and reaching towards him. "Let's talk! We can work this out! We-" And then the door was opened and the plane depressurized. Everyone in the cabin was flung out, and the autopilot disengaged and started plummeting towards the sides of the mountains. Uber spread his arms to slow his descent, and just enjoyed the skydiving experience while he watched bad guys get sucked out of the private jet and fall careening to the ground. He opened his parachute low, made a soft landing, and hit the beacon for his extraction back to Brockton.

* * *

Meanwhile, in an office in sunny California, Entourage was typing her RSVP up for a charity ball. It was actually a covert shakedown, the wealthy of the city paying their yearly protection money so that the Elite did not take everything they had. She was also in a dozen other offices in a dozen other cities, reading or working or relaxing or chatting with her colleagues. And then a man appeared in her office in a massive explosion. He wore the black hooded uniform of the Scavengers, one of the Entourages spent hours every week studying every new development in the world of parahumans, especially any rogues or rogue groups. She recognized the explosive teleport as belonging to Oni Lee, Butcher XV. And then she was gripped with a mindless rage. She flung herself forward, scratching for his eyes. She shrieked wordlessly, how dare he barge into her office!

He took her wrists easily, holding her back away from him. "You can't hurt me," he pointed out. "But maybe all of you working together could hurt me."

She snarled, and collapsed all of her duplicates, disappearing them from their various offices and homes and vehicles and restaurants, and reappearing here in this office. They pounced at him, trying to drag him down under the sheer weight of numbers and rage. He picked up her letter opener and cut one throat, two throats, three, then teleported to the far side of the spacious, well-lit office. The survivors were thrown back, stunned by the blast, with burns and broken bones. But they ignored their injuries to charge him again, and he cut three more throats before he exploded to another corner of the room. And bit by bit he whittled away every duplicate that Entourage could create. She eventually ran out of energy reserves and there were no more bodies, and he killed them methodically, systematically, dispassionately.

* * *

Regis Rex was one of the great powers of the Elite, a Brute on a level with Alexandria herself, just a step below the Siberian. He was massive, seven feet tall and hugely muscled, with thick wrists and a tapered waist. It took a special kind of tailor to make his top-of-the-line suits, and he was standing for a fitting when the little girl attacked. She was wearing the black cloak and uniform of the Scavengers when she walked into the back room of the haberdasher's, and accompanied by a half-dozen minions of her own, black-uniformed figures even bigger than Rex himself. The small Italian gnome with the pins in his arm-garter scrabbled out of the way, taking cover behind a thick oak wardrobe. Regis Rex boomed a laugh as he stepped forward. "The doll girl!" he boomed. His voice was as big as the man himself, it sounded like a bomb going off when he laughed, like distant thunder when he spoke. "Your Wharf Rat insults me with this gesture," he chuckled. "I will break him into pieces to teach him respect, after I've finished with you."

He punched the first fabric minion to reach him, and it collapsed around his fist as his strength overwhelmed the telekinetic field inside. But in a second it began reinflating, gaining back its mass and strength. He punched the next, but again it was only down for a second before it began to spring back. No amount of brute-force blunt trauma could stop a bunch of stuffed shirts. He grabbed and tore, ripping the next ones in half, but they began re-stitching in seconds. And the others were punching him. His invulnerability was almost absolute, only the smallest damage could be done to him by any blow, no matter how strong. He could weather a dozen nuclear attacks, punches from the Siberian, even go toe-to-toe with Behemoth. The blows from these creations could knock down walls or crumple cars, but to him they were like being swatted with a pillow.

But there were several of them, punching him from every angle continuously. Dozens of punches, dozens of swats with a pillow. And the ones he tore in half were reformed into two smaller ones, punching twice as often. He tried to charge on the girl herself, all it would take is a glancing blow from his fist and she would be killed, but he couldn't get any traction on the floor. The cloth creatures kept punching him upwards to take away his leverage, and his powers did not give him any adhesion to the ground. And then the tie around his neck began to constrict. He had to take a moment to reach up and snap it so it would release the pressure on his throat. And his clothes began to hamper him, pushing him this way and that to make an easier target. And then the tailor's shelves began to empty themselves of needles and thread, piercing him in dozens of tiny wounds. The threads rubbed at his skin, barely a paper cut, but he could see already the long, slow defeat ahead of him. He struggled, but he failed. It took him a long, long time to finish bleeding out.

* * *

Different assassins had different styles, matched up against their different targets. For example, the Patrician was a combination force-field projector and mind-controller. His habit was to protect himself in extremely powerful force fields, trap his enemies inside them, and then slowly infiltrate their minds so that they would obey his every order. And as a curious byproduct of his powers, nobody could teleport through his force fields, making him one of the world's premiere users of that power. They were technically not completely unbreakable, but only truly massive force could destroy them, and he could create new ones instantly. But when a skinny man in Scavenger black came smashing through the wall screaming " **HEY KOOLAID** ", while flashing red and white and yellow, it could catch anyone off-guard, even a man as habitually unflappable as the Patrician. He erected a force field in front of Leet, but the small man burst through it like it was a soap bubble. More fields appeared in front of him, layered tightly together, and the small tinker blew right through them all as he sprinted forward. Patrician raised his hands to protect himself where his force fields could not, and Leet punched him one time. The infinite force of that punch exploded the Patrician into a fine red mist that painted everything in the room in a uniform layer. And then Leet's invincibility star wore off, and he stopped flashing. "Ugh," he said, standing in the red-filmed room. "I had my mouth open..."

* * *

Of the Scavengers, Gulliver was the most hesitant about killing, so he was assigned the target who would not need to be killed. The Gentleman was likely the only regenerator on the planet more powerful than the Crawler, having been known to reconstitute himself from component atoms. And every time he used his regeneration, he gained a proportional boost to his strength and speed that would last for about an hour. Fighting him was a guaranteed disaster, every time. He stood in the bathroom of his penthouse suite of the Drake Hotel, while four beautiful terrified women shaved his face, brushed his hair, brushed his teeth, and serviced him sexually. He smiled laconically and reflected on how good life was. Then the women fell back, shrieking with surprise as someone new appeared. The Gentleman turned in place, eyebrow arched, and came face-to-face with a man in black who was popping the tab off a grenade cannister and dropping it next to three others. The Gentleman looked down in mild annoyance, and then the cannisters burst open with clouds of containment foam. It overwhelmed him in a second, immobilizing him and the man in black. But right before his head was obscured, he saw the man in black vanish without a trace. Gulliver waited until the foam hardened, then he threw the mass out the giant floor-to-ceiling window. And a larger stronger Gulliver caught it down on the sidewalk, and bustled it into the back of a truck. The Gentleman could not be killed, or defeated, but he could be buried in the Nevada desert.

* * *

Strictly speaking, Nonpareil was a healer. But her power worked by overlaying a person with an ideal version of their self, then changing them to fit that. Injuries would be healed instantly, and imperfections would be removed. Scars, birth defects, amputations, moles, infections, excess body fat, body hair, wrinkles, free radicals, and freckles would all be removed, creating a perfect version that was attractive, healthy, intelligent, and rather artificial looking. It even corrected the vagaries of evolution, improving on the human genome itself, Nonpareil's patients were stronger, tougher, faster, smarter, longer-lived, and had sharper senses than unperfected humans. But the power also considered the ideal version of a person to be a sociopath; all those beautiful healthy specimens also turned into cold-blooded monsters that would stab their own mothers in the back given the opportunity. Nonpareil herself traveled constantly in a crowd of her creations, though her first line of defense was simply to transform anyone that threatened her.

She walked through the studio, with dozens of hangers-on who looked like photoshopped models, all watching every direction to make sure that no flawed humans were allowed to approach their mistress. Only their own were allowed to move in close. Perfected people were her go-betweens, taking sketches from the designers and presenting them to herself, or relaying her instructions to the lesser humans that operated the studio. The flawless people were a cloud of cold, heartless beauty that surrounded her entirely. And then one of them drew a sword and stabbed her through the back of her neck. She died before she could start healing herself again, and fell onto the floor in an ugly heap.

The flawless monsters turned towards the young woman with the black curly hair and the sword, their dead eyes fastening on her. "Vengeance doesn't get you anything," the woman said, wiping her blade clean on Nonpareil's dress. "Loyalty to the woman would be rewarded, but loyalty to her memory is just a waste of time."

The beautiful people stared around at each other, shrugged, and walked away. And Benthic sheathed her sword and walked out, while cuing up her comm unit. "Panacea, hurry back to the rendezvous point, I really want my own face back now."

"Will do," Panacea replied. "But I'm really shocked you were able to do that. You didn't even like killing the Lamia monsters, and they were manufactured clones."

"I read her mind right before I attacked," Benthic replied. "Trust me, the better you understand Nonpareil's mind, the easier it is to kill her."

"Right then," Panacea replied. "I just dropped off a customized virus that should take out Uppercrust inside of the hour, and won't endanger anyone who isn't a left-handed redhead that shares a blood transfusion with Uppercrust herself. Heading back to my rendezvous point."

* * *

"Nearly there," Salvage said. He had a close eye on his target. Bastard Son was one of the most feared figures in the Elite, he and his squad of enforcers were considered by many to be a threat on par with the Slaughterhouse Nine. He was a teleporter, able to transport himself, or others, or objects nearly anywhere. And he bypassed the Manton effect. He could teleport someone's heart out of their body, or teleport their arm into the South Pacific with a glance. There was almost no degree of torture he was not capable of and comfortable with. But, he did enjoy his creature comforts and exotic destinations. Including small islands in the tropics, isolated enough that he could do whatever he wanted without concern that a nearby hero would make him cut his activities short.

Islands like this were so isolated that they did not have cell phone towers, and only spotty coverage from satellite phones as those satellites tended to be clustered over landmasses. So a single tower with a single satellite ping handled all the phone traffic, with a line running to the Bastard's cottage. The phone rang, bringing news of the disasters that had befallen the Elite. Bastard Son cursed and grumbled all the way as he crossed the room. He knew that the only people that had this number were too important for him to ignore, so he went to answer the phone immediately. He picked up the receiver and got out a "Hello?" before a nine-foot long arm made of sand bound by thin ravels of flesh came crashing through the floor, a giant fist that pounded upwards and smashed the Bastard Son against the ceiling, killing him in an instant. "All right," Salvage said, pulling himself out from under the floor. "My target's down, ready for extraction."

* * *

The next phone to ring belonged to Agnes Court, the leader of the Elite. She reached for it with trembling hands, already certain she knew what this call was. She had been briefed on the casualties so far, every few seconds another of her highest lieutenants was dead. She sat in a grand throne with simple design and sweeping lines, in the middle of a grand palace of fresh-carved wood, still sticky with sap in places. This palace was brand new, she had been working on it for only a week now, in between other projects. Her soldiers and henchmen had fled as more and more news came in from the other posts. The pattern was clear: not only were the upper echelons being wiped out ruthlessly, rapidly, and unexpectedly, but it was a progression from the bottom to the top, leading up to Agnes herself. She picked up the receiver. "Yes?" she said, keeping her voice clear and confident. If one must die, one need not die without dignity, after all.

"Agnes Court," said a man's voice with an East Coast inflection. "This is the Wharf Rat, of the Scavengers."

"I see," she said.

"We decline your invitation," he said. And then he hung up, after breaking the back of her entire organization and leaving her empire in shambles.


	21. Chapter 21

Salvage was the last one to step off the teleportation pad. "I won't lie, that thing gives me the willies," he said, his shoulders hunching as if his hackles were rising. "Teleportation is scary enough as it is, without trusting it to machines. And especially after you've spent three days reading up on the Bastard Son and what he's capable of."

"Don't worry, it's not my tech," Leet said, clapping the midget on the shoulder.

Panacea was finishing up on Taylor's face, returning her to her own appearance. "So where did you get a sword from, anyway?" Panacea asked.

"My dad wanted me to have it," Taylor said, patting the hilt. "It was the Mouse Protector's. See, funny thing about this sword. It's actually six weapons in one, if you count. Starting with the tip here, it's a chisel-shaped tip that is reinforced down the length of the blade, good for punching through armor, doors, or anything where you -"

Uber tapped on Danny's shoulder. "Hey, boss, are you really okay with us selling the factory? I know you've put more time into this place than any of us, maybe we could just put you in charge of it and-"

"Don't worry about me," Danny said. "Your factory. You named your company after this team, but that doesn't give me ownership over the money that you and Leet earned."

"Well, it's just that you've been off a bit all day," Uber said. "I can be an expert in reading people, and you've had your vocal responses delayed, your eye contact reduced, and your gestures have been inside your posture all day. I know something's up, and I wanna make sure it's not us."

He jerked his head towards the door, and he and Uber walked out discreetly while the others bantered around. Everyone was present except for Gambler, who was still at home with her parents. It meant less danger to her if she stayed away from the factory and the team. She had a console at home, enough to give her some tactical information on the team in the field, and Leet assured them it was unhackable. Something about it being entangled, Danny didn't get all of that. By mutually unspoken unanimous agreement, the team took the utmost care to never endanger Dinah to any degree. She was a sweet kid, and probably the most powerful and valuable of them all. The door slid shut behind the two men, and they walked the halls together. After hours, the lighting was low and dim, drowning the little color left in the factory. The place was gray on gray, Trainwreck's spray foam layered over slapped-together rubble.

"When I woke up today, I paid attention to what was going on, instead of half-tuning it out like usual," Danny said. "I've got almost infinite attention for my power, which sometimes is like having no attention for anything. In a lot of ways, multitasking as many things as I do is a lot like running on autopilot, just doing what you know you need to do and not second-guessing your movements. But now I wonder how long I've been running on autopilot. There were witness statements typed out in my name in the police precincts. Apparently while I was asleep, my rats witnessed a murder, reported it, helped the police apprehend the perpetrator, recovered the evidence, oversaw the crime scene forensics, dictated out a witness statement, signed my name, and logged the case number. During hours I was asleep. One murder today, a dozen assaults, a dozen burglaries, three child neglect cases, two smugglers, and a partridge in a pear tree. It all happened exactly like I would have done it if I was awake. I checked the memories of the mice and rats to make sure. Most of the rodents in this city now were born after I got my powers, they only live a few years and they breed fast, especially when I'm helping. So most of them have enough intelligence for me to review their memories, and I saw what they did, how they moved, everything. And it was all by the book, my book."

Uber looked a little distressed. "Shit, boss. Now, I just happen to be an expert in parahuman powers, right now, so I can tell you that powers like yours don't activate when you're asleep. It's a protective mechanism, like the Manton limit. If using a power was like moving your arm, something you could do that reflexively, then every pyrokinetic would burn down their house, every teleporter would wind up in the street in their pajamas. It doesn't happen."

"Right," Danny said. "So, what if this infinite multitask thing means that my brain is always active when there are rodents in my radius? Like, what if my brain isn't actually asleep when I think it is? What if I'm not really rested, I just feel rested? I've read about people with brain damage that kept them from sleeping, they degenerated badly. We need sleep, and some part of me is not ever sleeping. There has to be a downside to that, am I going to burn out?"

"I'm only an expert in what someone might know," Uber confessed. "Maybe talk to Gambler about this."

Danny stopped at the corner and leaned against the wall. "Can't do it. I'm her hero, I can't get her scared for me, can't make her wonder if I'm going to fall apart. If I plant that idea, it will poison everything she ever thinks about me from this day forward."

"So, it's not worth worrying Gambler about, but it's worth worrying yourself about," Uber said, sighing. "Theo was right about you." He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest.

The breath rattled out of Danny slowly, a heartfelt silent sigh. "Uber? Are you getting what you want?"

"I want to make video games, to hang out with friends, and for the world to not end," Uber said without hesitation. "You guys are my friends. We're going to prevent the Eschaton. And if I sell the factory, I can go back to programming any time I'm not working with you guys. So, yes yes and soon, if that's okay."

"I want you to be okay," Danny said. "If the factory is not what you want, then sell it off. We'll find another headquarters. It'll be easier now that our auxiliary team has given us a teleporter pad."

* * *

Papers rustled as Taylor cleared a spot on the corner of the desk. "I think you need to stop and self-assess again," she said, looking her father in the eye. "Remember what we said about confidence, and certainty, and how it turns you into the worst version of yourself?"

The chair tipped back with a creak as Danny rocked back, a wry half-grin etched on his face. "Seriously? Confident and arrogant is the last things I feel right now. I'm being eaten up by doubts. I have doubts about my doubts, and I have doubts about those doubts too. Am I right to start an auxiliary team? Do I have the right people on it? Have I told the right people about it? Should I keep it secret so they can catch enemies by surprise when it really counts, or should I publicize it so that people like the Elite stop thinking that there's only a handful of us protecting this whole city? Is the mayor doing enough to put Accord's plans into effect? Is he finding a way to betray me? Did Accord slip some booby traps into those plans so that we'll accidentally screw everything up if we follow his instructions? He is devious enough for that, you know. Do we have any hopes of preventing the Eschaton? Are we crazy to try? Should I expose Cauldron so they lose their power? Should I help them stay secret so that they don't panic people? Am I relying on Gambler too much? Am I counting on odds too much, when it's let me down and gotten people killed before? You know. Stuff like that."

"Right, but I'm not worried about the doubts you have," Taylor said. She pulled her foot up onto the desktop, tucked her chin onto her knee and laced her hands over her ankle. "I'm concerned by the doubts you don't have. Agnes Court," she prompted.

"You mean not killing her?" Danny asked, sitting forward and standing up. He started pacing around the small office. "Agnes isn't like Nonpareil or Blueblood. Her power is constructive, not inherently dangerous. And while she's amoral enough to employ people like the Bastard Son and Regis Rex, she's not actually the type to get her hands dirty. She is dangerous as a leader of the Elite, but she's not dangerous as plain old Agnes Court, _former_ leader of the Elite. There are very, very few people in the world that can do construction on the scale she can, as quickly as she can. That's a valuable resource, one that's too important to throw away. Not like-"

"Yeah, I gotta stop you there," Taylor said. "Ahem. Resource."

Pausing in his pacing, Danny considered his words. "I didn't really mean it like that."

"But you said it anyway," Taylor reminded him. "And maybe you didn't realize what you meant or didn't mean until I called you out on it."

His pacing picked up again, and he stared at the bulletin board for a few seconds while he gathered his thoughts. "If Agnes Court loses her minions and her power, she will lose her money. She will be easy to recruit for the reconstruction of Brockton Bay. We still have major road damage, and a lot of foundations need to be shored up around the sinkhole, and our population is expanding fast. In our world, talents like hers are outnumbered a thousand to one by people that break things or burn things. So, we can pay her, pennies on the dollar, to fix things and build things. She can start making up for the damages she's caused. The rest of the Elite can never compensate, they will only hurt people as long as they were alive." His fingers picked at a sticky note, and he turned around to pace the other direction. "There has to be more to these powers and this life than just trashing what other people worked hard to build."

"You've been wrong about this sort of thing before," she pointed out. "When you try to decide for yourself who gets to stay and who is no good to anyone." She turned to look at the map on the wall, and used the Mouse Protector's sword to tap on the big empty space north of the Trainyards, deep woods too rocky and overrun with small streams for anyone to try to develop or build on.

Danny winced. "Okay. Yeah, I was wrong about Hellhound. She's doing a great job there. I really thought she was going to be unmanageable, a loose cannon that would kill anyone who annoyed her. I thought the city would be plagued by giant monsters if we let her set up her wildlife refuge that close to the city."

"She prefers to be called Bitch," Taylor pointed out.

"I prefer to be called Your Highness, but nobody seems to care about that," Danny shot back, grinning at his own joke. "Maybe I shouldn't have ordered the rest of the Elite killed. Maybe I should have killed Agnes Court. I don't actually know. I made the best call I could. I can have my second-guesses and my second thoughts, my endless doubts and my lists of pros and cons. Nobody sees the indecision, you don't see the indecision. Because only the decisions are visible to anyone but myself."

She gave him a long look. "I suppose so," she said. "But not that long ago, you asked me to double check you. And now you're telling me that you don't need that much double-checking. So either you're further gone than you think you are, or I'm overdoing it a bit. I think we should change the subject a bit and then come back."

"Change to what?"

"Why did you give me the sword?" Taylor asked, raising the steel weapon to gesture with. "I know it meant a lot to you. And I get a bad feeling when you start giving away personal items, especially sentimental items, before major confrontations. It makes me wonder what Gambler's told you that she doesn't tell the rest of us. People do that sort of thing when they know they're dying, dad. And I think that you still remember how much it hurt both of us that Mom never said goodbye."

Danny leaped across the room and gathered the girl up in a hug. "Jesus, Taylor, I'm sorry, I'm sorry you think that's what's going on. I'm sorry that you thought I've been getting ready to die. The answer is no, God no, I'm not planning on going anywhere. Don't think that. Don't think that I'd get ready to die, and not bother to say goodbye. I wouldn't, couldn't do that to you. Okay? No, I just gave you the sword because it's a good sword, and it should be used the way that Mouse used it. And I thought you would do that, I trusted you with the sword. That is all, nothing more. It's no memorial to her when it's sitting on my wall. It's only a memorial to her when it's being used by a hero, the way that you do."

* * *

"I honestly just can't believe the city actually went for this," Pariah said. "I especially can't believe that Bitch went for this. She's about as hostile and stand-offish as anyone could be."

Danny turned half-over his shoulder to answer her. "She might be hostile and defensive, but she's also overwhelmed. The city's been bringing her every stray they catch, and it's a strain on everyone's resources. And since there's basically no better dog trainer anywhere in New England, she's the perfect choice to turn feral strays into potential pets." Pariah was sitting in the back seat, because her legs were the shortest. Both Danny and his daughter had long lanky legs that served best in the front seats of the car.

"And we all kind of needed a day off," Oni Lee said into the comms. "It's been a long time since we took any time for ourselves."

"I'm not sure I have ever once seen you do anything for fun, Oni Lee," Taylor said. Her voice held a smile as she stared out the window. They were crossing the Trainyards to the north of the city, taking the highway. To the right was a thin screen of scrub and shoreside shrubbery and a long expanse of water that was hard to look at, reflecting the sunlight. The mile-marker posts were dusty with sand on that side. To the left was a dense wall of trees, mostly thickly-packed evergreens that seemed to spill over the side of the highway like a frozen wave. Danny thought it looked like the trees were gathered together to try to push the road into the ocean.

"I won't lie, it'll be nice to be out and about and out of costume," Gulliver said. "It seems like all I do is go on missions and train for more missions, every minute I'm not in school. I haven't had many opportunities to just chill out with people."

"Me too," Salvage said.

"You watch like twelve hours of Netflix a day," Uber pointed out. "You can go socialize and meet people any time you'd like."

"Screw you big guy," Salvage shot back with mock-annoyance. "I'm still learning the pop culture of your dimension. It's really important that I have all the right touchstones and idioms of speech."

"Still weird to think of you coming from another dimension," Gambler pointed out.

"Tell me about it," the small man said. "I'm lucky I speak the language at all. I'll probably never know where Cauldron got me from or why, or what I looked like before they turned me into a Smeagol and Panacea gave me a new face. That's not just regular amnesia, that's like being born as an adult with no history at all and no knowledge of the world itself."

Panacea spoke up for the first time. "Still, twelve hours is pretty excessive. You might have an easily-addicted personality. You should watch out for that, stay away from stimuli that could tempt you into long-term addiction."

"Awww," Salvage whined exaggeratedly. "But binge-drinking looks like so much _fun_! Oh, and heroin! I've been meaning to get into heroin!"

"I'll turn you back into a frog-goblin if you mess around with that stuff," Panacea said. "Don't even kid about that."

"Yes, _mom_ ," Salvage drawled.

"Panacea, are you on-site yet?" Danny asked.

"We're just pulling in now," she said. "And when you see me, it's Amy, not Panacea."

Leet spoke up. "That's right, no code names today. No costumes, no powers, no codenames, no reference to what we do. Just ten people from mixed backgrounds that happen to be mutual friends, hanging out at a public event."

"Man, I'm not even sure I know what all of your names are," Salvage said. "Seriously, it's been a long time since we interacted outside of Scavenger business."

"I'm Sabah," Pariah reminded him. "Don't worry about the inflection, nobody gets it right."

"Call me John," Leet said.

"And I'm Karl," Uber added. "My real name, I haven't gone by that in years."

"I guess I'm still going by Josh," Salvage added. "So today I'm Josh."

"I've decided to be Bruce," Oni Lee said.

"You can't be serious," Sabah said. "That is way, way too on the nose."

"There are still Asian men named Bruce, they're not all named after Bruce Lee," Oni Lee replied.

Karl snorted. "You're fooling yourself, man. They're all named after _him_."

"And, uh, my name is Theo," Gulliver reminded them.

"I just this second realized that name is short for Theodore," Josh said. "Your father, the white supremacist crimelord who creates swords at will, who names his bodyguards after Norse mythology, named you his own son after the fat guy from Alvin and the Chipmunks."

"I was not named after a chipmunk," Theo shot back, his tone heated.

"Cool it you two," Danny put in.

"Yes, _mom_ ," Josh said.

Danny turned towards his daughter. "Screw Cauldron, I'm gonna kill them myself."

"There's our turn," she said, untroubled by the incipient murder.

They turned off the highway at the temporary sign that was erected at the side of the road. _Hellhound's Canine Preserve_ it originally read, but someone had already corrected the proprietor's name back to _Bitch_. Danny had put mice up here to watch the area weeks ago, and he already knew the layout. The preserve itself, or ranch or shelter or dog-run or whatever one wanted to call it, was about thirty miles on one side and ten miles in the other direction, for three hundred square miles. Plenty of room for dogs to run and romp about, even after they had been turned into three-ton monsters of raw muscle and barbed bones. The exterior was surrounded by a chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top, regularly posted with signs warning of wild animals and parahuman threats, and that trespassers would be killed on sight and the killers would not be prosecuted. So far, that had been enough to keep anyone from breaking in. That, and the fact that there was nothing worth doing or seeing inside the fence line other than giant half-trained murder machines.

The southeast corner of the property was marked by a wide, low-slung building made in the style of the late Trainwreck. The warped concrete and rough shapes reminded the heroes of the factory they worked out of or lived in. The building was set at an angle on the corner, and from the front of it and the parking lot there was hardly any sign of the ominous fence and its overtly threatening signs. The front was made almost entirely of roll-up garage doors, the interior was empty space with structural pillars. The back wall of the low-slung building was a single waist-high wall from one side to the other, and a series of broad windows with huge shutters that opened outward and upward like an awning. Most days, this building was completely empty, or used to store dog food and medical supplies. On most Saturdays, it was the site of a delivery of dogfood and supplies and some bare human necessities almost as an afterthought, and a single vet that drove up from Brockton Bay to make sure the dogs were still healthy. On this Sunday, it was open for the first time to the public, and there was nothing but standing room available.

Citizens of the city were up here to see the massive dogs and their supervillain handler. Tourists were here to see the display. PRT reps were here to keep the peace. Dog lovers from the area were here to take in the sights, and to try to pick out an adoptee; word had gone out that this first opening was a show-and-tell only, but that in subsequent weeks arrangements would be made for the fully-trained animals to be rehomed and adopted out. Bitch was famously protective of her dogs, but after the first few hundred of them she recognized that she needed to offload some of the animals.

"We could flash our credentials and move to the front of the line," Uber said, staring in disgust at the mass of humanity between him and the show.

"You mean use our superpowers and let people know that the Scavengers are on the scene," Theo said.

"Yeah, that."

"Everyone waits for their turn, and we're not better than them," Danny said.

"We kinda are, though," Uber pointed out.

"Hush." Danny looked around, and spotted what he was looking for. "C'mon, Taylor."

He led the way through the thin crowd at the periphery, people who were not yet committed enough to join the press and crush that was shoving its way into the small concrete bunker. "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Dallon," he said, reaching forward to shake their hands. "I believe your daughter goes to school with my daughter."

Panacea and Benthic gave each other an upnod while Flashbang and Brandish turned to appraise this stranger. Danny grinned at them, and Mark Dallon shook his hand before his wife Carol did. "Wait, are you W-" Carol started to say, but Amy hushed her with a hiss. "Right, uh, sorry," she said. "I'm not used to seeing the masked heroes outside of their costumes. Or rogues, or whatever your group is."

"Strictly speaking, we're all rogues since the Protectorate stranded us here," Danny said, still smiling. "But, after working with your daughter as long as I have, I thought it was well past time that we all meet face to face."

A big man loomed out of the crowd, nearly as big as Neil Pelham, Manpower. Uber stepped neatly into the conversation. "So, since they're already recognized heroes, without secret identities, how about they flash their credentials and get us to the front of the line?"

Leet stepped up right beside him. "You'll have to forgive my associate," the weedy little man said. "He's used to throwing down smoke bombs when he wants to get to the front of a line. Hi, I'm John," he said, shaking hands with the New Wave, starting with Mark and Carol Dallon, then Neil and Sarah Pelham. "This is Karl."

Carol raised an eyebrow and mouthed something like 'tuber and meat', but Uber and Leet knew what she meant and they gave her a discreet pair of nods.

"Oh, and speaking of people that go to school with your kids," Theo said, stepping into the circle of bodies. "I'm Theo. Theo _Anders_."

Sarah, Lady Photon or Photon Mom depending on who you ask, gave a wince at that. "Sorry about that, Theo."

"No problem. He's in jail now, along with, well, every living relation I've got," he said. "I'm technically a ward of the state, but that mostly just means that I come and go at the orphanage whenever I want, they're not trying to foster me out because the laws that allow the Wards to operate as adults are still active even if the Wards don't reside in the city anymore. Sometimes I crash at our headquarters, sometimes at the orphanage. And nobody gives me a hard time, because everyone knows who I am. That's like the only benefit that ever came out of that debacle when Coil revealed the identities of the entire Empire."

Mark Dallon nodded. "That actually doesn't sound that bad," he said. His wife favored him with a smile and squeezed his arm. Danny thought there was something going on there that he wasn't privy to, but he had no idea how to ask about that and was pretty sure it was no part of his business at all.

"So, Neil," he said, turning to the big man known more commonly as Manpower, and known for his great strength and invulnerability, "I understand that your contracting company has been expanding."

"Mostly acquiring," Neil replied. "The local market has been pinching a lot of the owners out of the construction business, at the same time as there is more construction work to be done. So I've got more projects, more personnel, but barely any more profit."

"That doesn't make sense," John/Leet said, shaking his head.

"Localized deflation," Neil said. "Cost of living in Brockton is in a freefall, cost of goods and services is dropping fast. Wages are dropping almost as fast. It started with the changes in the housing market after the Class-S attacks and the new residents, add the local production manufacturing to that mix and it creates a downward pressure on prices and an upward pressure on the value of currency. So for businessmen that were used to making a million dollars a year, making eight-hundred thousand is like losing money, so they sell their company to me and they move to some other city that is still in an inflation cycle. It should stabilize in a few months, but it's going to stabilize at a low rate, with cheap housing, low wages, and cheap local products. Less shipments in from outside the city, more shipments outward from the city, it's a boom time to be working construction or manufacturing in Brockton Bay, and it's only getting better."

John and Karl traded a look. Karl shrugged. "Still haven't changed my mind. We didn't make games to make money, so we're not managing a factory to make money." John shrugged back off-handedly.

"The reason I ask," Danny started. "Is-"

"Are you an economics major or something?" Salvage asked, from down around Manpower's knees. "How do you know all that stuff?"

"My major is actually in business administration, but I read all the time," Neil said. "I can't stand anything with commercials. Hi, I'm Neil."

"Josh," the midget said, shaking his hand. "And if you've seen me on the news, I was the really, really big one."

"Ah," Neil said, nodding knowingly. "I understand my niece invented that face you've got."

"Beats the one I had before by a long shot," Josh said.

"Ahem," Danny said. "The reason I asked, was because of someone that worked on Bilder road crews before Pelham Contractors bought out Bilder. There's a _certain_ young man with a _secret_ that I'm not _presently_ at liberty to share."

Neil hesitated, then nodded. "Got it. We'll talk later."

"Where's Victoria?" Carol asked, looking around them.

"Over with Sabah," Amy said, pointing just behind her.

Tori and Sabah looked up briefly, gave a wave, then looked back down at the smartphone where Sabah was showing off her designs for the girl. Their conversation was quiet but heated, moving fast and involving a lot of gestures. Danny felt he should leave well enough alone. Instead he looked around, and spotted a familiar family headed his way, with a twelve-year-old girl talking quickly and animatedly to the Asian man that walked with them. He broke away from the Dallons to approach them.

"Mr. Alcott, Mrs. Alcott," he said, smiling and shaking hands. "We've met before, but never _strictly speaking_ face-to-face."

"It _is_ you," Dinah's father said, grinning as he pumped Danny's hand. "I recognize the voice, if nothing else. Thank you again for rescuing our girl."

"I feel bad taking your thanks after your daughter has saved all of our lives so many times over," Danny said, but he nodded graciously as he did. "C'mon, I'd like you to meet my daughter, Taylor."

Sabah saw Dinah on her way over, and groaned. "Not fair!" she blurted. "The last time I saw Dinah, she was the shortest girl on the team!"

Victoria Dallon, the Glory Girl, looked up at the twelve-year-old, then over at the twenty-two-year-old. "Have you considered heels? Fashionable shoes would help you a lot with that sort of thing. Besides, you have an actual midget on your team, you're never really the shortest."

Sabah sighed. "When he's walking around, he usually binds up enough sand or dirt to make himself a normal-sized man, more or less, and just wears long pants, long sleeves, and gloves so it's not obvious. He only skipped that today because he'd have to hold one size for the whole trip."

Danny arranged introductions between the Alcott family and the Dallons and the Pelhams, and introduced all of them together to his daughter Taylor. "I have to say, I've always admired what you guys are trying to do," Danny said. "No masks, no costumes, public identities. Full disclosure, full accountability. It seems like that should be the way that heroism is handled. I just can't get behind the idea of bringing your kids into that."

"You've got your own daughter on your own team," Mark pointed out.

"Your daughter triggered _after_ she joined this team," Panacea pointed out. "And _after_ she had already been accepted as one of the Wards, then dropped out. Heck, I was right there, Taylor definitely triggered _because_ she was on your team."

"Oh, my god the line's finally moving," John said.

"Only a few feet. Patience still," Karl replied stoically.

"Okay, that's true," Danny said. "But there's a difference between getting a child involved in parahuman hijinks, and getting your child involved with no mask on. As of now, Laserdream and Shielder and Glory Girl are never going to have the option of obscurity. They're public, and they'll always be public. Panacea wears an organic power armor so people don't realize that she's splitting time between your team and ours."

"Speaking of, ick," Glory Girl said.

"I've fixed it up, it's pretty comfortable now," Panacea said, elbowing her sister.

"But _anyway_ ," Danny continued, speaking over the teenage girls. "I think that nobody should be committed to that sort of a life until they're a legal adult, acting on their own. It just seems a bit... I don't know. Presumptuous maybe? Not quite the right word."

"I get what you're saying," Sarah said, nodding. "And we did think about it. But the kids had valuable powers that could help people, and we needed all the help we could get. Besides, if we were unmasked, they would need to be unmasked. We couldn't just divide our lives in half, and keep them raised in a basement so nobody would connect them to us."

Danny winced. "I hadn't thought about it that way."

"And we had an ace in the hole," Carol added, dropping a hand onto Amy's shoulder. "Any of the kids that decided they didn't want this life, we could give them a new face and start them off fresh anywhere they want."

"Okay, that too," Danny conceded.

"I think you all underestimate how lucky you are," Mr. Alcott said. "Your children are part of these teams _with_ you. My wife and I just try not to take too much of Dinah's time away from her team."

"And the team tries not to take too much of her time away from you and your family," Danny said, shrugging. "It's a hard life for all of us, and I'm sorry you've been pulled into it."

"I absolutely understand what you mean," Carol Dallon said, and took Amy's hand again. "Amy here is trying to split her time between our team, your team, school, and her volunteer work at the hospitals."

"Honestly less of a challenge than you'd expect," Amy said. "There's not nearly as much pressure to heal people at the hospitals as there used to be, ever since I created a virus that cures cancer."

"Well, there has to be a ton of work despite that," Mr. Alcott said. "There's always people sick or hurt that need help."

Amy sighed. "I'd love for that to be the simple truth. Before I built the cancer-killing cold, all they let me work on was Stage IV cancer. Late in the cycle, the patient is terminal, no hope for recovery unless I help. Basically, after they had tried everything they could, and billed the patient for everything they could, and there was nothing left to do but wait for the patient to die, then they'd let me use my powers. I can cure a hundred Stage I cases in the time it takes to cure one Stage IV. I could prevent Stage I patients from ever reaching Stage IV. I could save their families months of heartache and tens of thousands of dollars in costs. And yet they never let me work on a patient until they had extracted all the money they could. They call it 'preserving jobs', but you could just as easily call it 'exploiting tragedy'. They even threatened to sue me and my family if I started going to patients' homes to cure them outside the hospital. They ruin thousands of lives every year for the sake of making sure their doctors have something to do and charge people for."

"Lots of things work like that," Danny pointed out somberly. "There are plenty of terrakinetic parahumans out there, but you rarely see them working construction or cleaning up after disasters. Because it would keep someone from earning money. I've got a faint hope that Agnes Court could add something productive to the world, but even if she wanted to, there'd be obstacles. I just... I just feel like saving lives isn't enough. We have to do more than just minimize the damage, we have to do more than just mitigate the harm. If heroes don't do anything but try to keep villains from winning too much, then we've set our sights way too low. We need to make the world better, not must 'less worse'."

"Maybe the world doesn't want to be better?" Amy asked, folding her arms over her stomach. "They won't let me treat broken arms or major burns, because they'd rather let people suffer than lose money, and because they're still mad at me for curing cancer. Did you know that they're restricting access to cured patients? There's a room full of people who sneeze and cough and recover from cancer, and they won't let anyone in there until they're at Stage IV. If they just let this into the open, we could prevent literally hundreds of millions of deaths over the long term. And then there's all the laws against letting tinker inventions out into mass production, and the NEPEA laws that keep parahumans out of media and business."

Sarah sighed and shook her head. "It's not a new conundrum. What do you do when people don't seem to want your help? When you could make things better but nobody seems to want it? It's a moral quandary that we all just have to deal with for ourselves."

Danny opened his mouth, paused, glanced at Taylor, and then closed his mouth. If it was an age-old ethical dilemma, and he was about to tell everyone how they should deal with it, then he was probably thinking from the wrong place again. The part of him that didn't know how to be indifferent or indecisive, the part that used people to get its own way. He just shut that down, swallowed what he was going to say, and shelved that idea for later.

They were moving forward, gradually. It was the same sort of herd intelligence that kept people traveling in the same direction in grocery stores and zoos, a gradual movement that brought people in from one side and moved them to the front, and then across, and then back out. It was nothing so defined as "standing in line", but it worked the same way. They were finally standing under the shade of the low-slung roof. That meant they were close, but it also meant that people were pressing in tight around them so it was no longer safe to discuss their shared line of work.

"I ran across a quote from Ambrose Bierce the other day," Danny said to his daughter. "Ahem. 'Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret'. I think that sounds kind of like that thing we were talking about."

"Like the way that you get worked up, and you get irrational, and you get persuasive, and you can get people to do what you want them to but only when you probably shouldn't have that po- uh, talent?"

"Like that," Danny agreed. "It's actually kind of nice to know that it's not just me that gets like that, you know? It's about how passion always cuts both ways. There's a reason that the French word for strong feelings can also be the word for fire, after all. That strength of emotion can carry you far, but it will always let you down at the end."

"Interesting thought," Amy said, gnawing at her lip. "But there's a deep-sounding quote for anything you want to say, and it's easy to read too much into it."

"Stop being so wise," Josh retorted. "Hey, I wanna remind you guys that when we get to the front I'm gonna need one of you guys to give me a boost."

Taylor chuckled. "I'll do it."

"It'll look weird if you do it," Karl pointed out, his eyes flicking back and forth between his body and hers. He was a tall, broad-shouldered muscleman, she was a teenage girl so thin as to be scrawny. She was significantly stronger than him, because of Panacea's alterations, but that did not change what they looked like.

"Fine," she sighed. "How about Bruce?"

Bruce just nodded disinterestedly. He was the physically strongest of them, without changing his shape, he had portions of three different sets of superstrength and his own rigorous exercise training.

The line started moving fast, and Danny could see through the eyes of a harvest mouse as Bitch leaped off the back of the dog she was pacing back and forth, yelling at one of the visitors. Some kid was trying to feed one of the dogs some beef jerky out of his hand, and she let him know, at the top of her lungs, that this was not acceptable. It was bad for their training if it worked, and it would be worse for their training if there was an accident. He was just trying to bribe the dog with a treat so it would like him, but the dog needed to like its own pack, and its eventual family, and not some snotnose dickhead that had some jerky. Teaching dogs not to take treats from strangers was one of the hardest and most important lessons, they were trusting and sweet and humans could poison anything at all. The boy's family tried to hustle him along to the side away from her, but she followed them and kept yelling, threatening. A couple dozen people moved with them, put off by her attitude and language. The crowd moved somewhat as the abashed audience made their way out, and that brought Danny and his party to the front early.

She was turning back to jump up on her dog when she noticed a dozen harvest mice sitting on top of the animal, staring straight at her with perfect stillness and calmness. "Rat," she growled, turning back to the building. Her dogs were pacing back and forth in the clearing, showing off for the audience like a zoo exhibit, all of them grown to full size and showing the full range of their gnarled mutations. He knew it was not all of her dogs, just the ones that were safe to have at this size around people. The less-trained ones were stashed somewhere in the nature preserve. She stalked forward to the awning-decked windows, and glared around until she spotted Danny, picking him out by his height and build. "You," she said.

"Quietly, please," Danny said, leaning forward, bracing his elbows on the windowsill and leaning forward. "You've settled in well."

"You tried to send me to jail, Rat," she snarled, stalking forward. She was practically nose-to-nose with the man, but at least she had her voice low enough that it didn't give away his secret identity. "But the PRT gave me my deal," she said, smugly.

"Yeah, the PRT cut a deal with your lawyer to keep you out of prison," Danny said. "And they set up all this land to let you run your dogs. And they were writing out checks every week to pay for your supplies. And we're all lucky that the PRT stayed behind when the Protectorate moved out of the city. But I wanted to stop by and make sure that you're okay. And I wanted to see if you've thought about my offer."

Her eyes narrowed spitefully. "I should say no just because it's you."

"But it's not just me," he reminded her. "And, you would never even see me or talk to me. The auxiliary wouldn't activate unless I was too far away or too busy or something. And you wouldn't even be leaving this place at all, really."

She glared, and crossed her arms over her chest. "You're going to tell me I don't have a choice."

"Actually no," he said. "I'm not working for or with the PRT. They're your handlers. I'm running an unsanctioned team. I can't do anything but ask you to do this."

"Then no," she said, grinning fiercely.

"But you'd be helping your friends if you did," Danny pointed out.

"All my friends are inside this fence," she retorted. "Fuck everyone else."

"Grue and his sister? Tattletale?" he prompted her.

She shrugged. "It was about money. I worked with them. Now I've got what I want, and they can fuck off."

Taylor arched an eyebrow. "Jesus, I'm glad the Scavengers aren't like that. I'm actually shocked the Undersiders didn't tear each other apart early on."

"Shut up Baby Rat," Bitch shot back.

"It's not like the auxiliary really needs her," Danny said, shrugging. "They've got Mockshow, and that's even better. Everything made of mechanical parts instead of living animals."

"Bullshit," Bitch snapped, jabbing a finger into Danny's face. "I've seen what she does, and it's not the same. Sure, she makes something big and tough that follows her orders, but her shit is made out of cars and refrigerators. It might be as strong as what I do, but she can only make one or two at a time, and her shit is slow. My dogs are faster, they can jump and think for themselves and they've got instincts. My dogs would tear her shit apart one-on-one, and they would outnumber her a dozen to one. No, you can't just replace me with that dumbass."

"But you haven't heard about Chariot," Danny pointed out. "The new tinker for the backup team, he specializes in speed and vehicles, but not like Squealer. He's already made some teleporters for us. If they've got him, and Mockshow, they don't need you. And if they need even more speed, then there's Madcap. He's a super-speed hitter."

"I'm as good as both of them put together," Bitch sneered. "Better."

"So you think they really do need you?" Danny prompted her.

She scoffed. "Damn right they do. But I don't need them. So fuck off." She started to turn away again.

"And you have absolutely everything you need?" Danny asked, his voice trailing up expectantly. The crowd was pushing him from the right, pressure building up as more people wanted to see the giant mutant dogs and their mistress.

"Everything," she insisted. "Dogs, food, I'm building a cabin for myself. Don't need anything else."

"Nothing at all? Nothing small or simple that bugs you because you don't have it?"

She hesitated, then gritted her teeth. She knew he had caught her hesitating.

Danny stood up straight, coming off his elbows. "Just think about it a bit. I'll ask Tattle to send Wordsworth and Wallop around to talk to you, maybe take Floret with them. Maybe it's music, or a new knife, or a toothbrush, I don't know. I don't need to know. But they'll come around next week, and you can talk to them then." He let the crowd carry him away, and the rest of the Scavengers were pushed out onto the parking lot again.

"Wordsworth and Wallop?" Josh asked.

"Couple of new arrivals," Karl said. "One of them can cause explosions when he curses, the other one can expand parts of his body. They're both kinda low-power, but they are parahumans and they needed a job, and working for the Scavenger's Auxiliary is better than a lot of jobs. We're getting to the point that lots of new people are moving into the city, and not all of them want to try to take it over."

"I'm not wild about Floret," Sabah added. "Take it from someone else who works with small objects and small powers, it teaches you to be sneaky. I don't think we'll ever be able to trust her."

Danny snickered. "Seriously? You're going to talk to _me_ about how small powers teach you to be sneaky?"

"You don't count," Sabah said. "Your power is huge, when you understand it, it only looks small to idiots."

Dinah was grinning hugely. "I think I want a dog," she said, tugging on her parents' arms."

"Um," her mother said, "they don't stay that big, do they? They do shrink back down into regular dogs after a while, right?"

"It'd be kinda nice to do this again," Sarah Pelham said. "Two teams just coming together for an afternoon. New Wave and the Scavengers, just having a hero's day off."

"Eight point six five percent chance," Dinah said. "Sorry to burst the bubble."

"I would have given us at least a thirty percent chance," Carol joked weakly.

"Just dropped to seven point nine seven percent," Dinah said, wincing.

Danny heaved a sigh and stepped forward. "This is probably a one-time thing. But maybe that's okay. God knows the city's big enough for all of us. If we get Hellhound in the Auxiliary, that's twenty-seven heroes in Brockton Bay, more than there ever has been. Your team inspires people with its message, with bright colors that play well on the camera. We're the black-bloc strike force that doesn't hang around for publicity. You show people what they should aspire to, and we show them why they should aspire to that. We get involved in politics, you get involved in media. And there is room for both ways of doing things. Earlier, Sarah was talking about the moral quandary: what do you do when you can help people who don't want your help? Do you let them suffer for their own reasons, or do you help them despite their protests? Maybe we need two teams, so we can do it both ways. New Wave to respect people's wishes, and the Scavengers to do the right thing nobody wants them to do."

Sarah gave him a long stare, sizing him up, thinking about what he was saying and what it would mean. "So it probably would be best if we weren't seen in public together. And I don't just say this because it gives mixed messages, but because I kind of think that I don't like you. You're comfortable bullying people into doing the right thing and making up your own reasons why that's okay. And I don't want to get comfortable doing that."

Carol winced, and turned from her sister to her foster daughter. "Amy, you work with both teams, even if nobody knows it's you on his team. I won't tell you to drop that, but... you told me once that this won't last much longer. Just a few more missions, a few more fights. I really hope that's true."

Danny looked from the mother to the daughter, the awkwardness and the conflicted feelings. "I will do what I can to step things up a bit, and get this whole situation resolved," he said. "I'm well due for a vacation, and I'd like to take it sooner rather than later."

John the weedy little tinker scoffed loudly. "Pshaw! As if you could really quit and go back to a normal life after this!" He elbowed the taller man.

"In a heartbeat," Danny said with a stony deadpan expression. "If I thought my work was done, I would quit this minute, and go work a day job and hang out with my daughter, my friends from work."

"Well, by all means let's finish your work up so I can get my daughter back, and you can get yours, full-time," Carol said.

* * *

The room was a neat half-cube. The ceiling was ten feet up from the floor, the walls were twenty feet on a side. And Danny carried in two chairs, comfortable but spare-looking. He arranged them carefully, measuring the space out with a lot of trial and error. He settled on putting them both centered in the middle of the room, facing each other, with six feet between them and the walls behind them, and about six feet between them. It was an arrangement that seemed to respect personal space but kept them in conversational distance, with a minimum of distractions. He sat in each one himself to make sure they were comfortable and secure, and when he was satisfied he shrugged off his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair. A half-dozen small mice dropped from it and scampered out the door. He blew out a breath and concentrated, to make sure he wasn't forgetting any. It had become such a habit to keep mice or rats on his person or in his proximity that it was hard to focus on all of them, he just thought of them as part of himself.

And then he shut the door, locked it from the inside, and sent the mice and rats to go get something to eat, far enough away from this room that they could not come to his aid in time. He patted himself down to make sure he hadn't kept any reserve weapons on him, not so much as a containment-foam grenade or a roll of quarters. When he was sure that he was as harmless as he could be, he stood beside his chair and spoke into the air.

"Would you please let Contessa know that she is invited to speak with me?" he said.

It took a few minutes, during which he grew ever more self-conscious, before the door opened in the air. And the dark-haired woman stood in the doorway, staring straight at him with a look that was partly curious, and partly appraising. She wore a well-tailored suit that let her move and kept crisp shoulders and waistline, with a matching fedora tucked low over her forehead and nearly hiding her eyes. Danny gestured towards the other chair. "Thank you for coming," he said. "Would you care to sit?"

"I will sit," she said. Her accent was faint but he placed it as something almost Italian but not quite. She moved to the front of the chair, stepping from Cauldron's gleaming white tile to the Scavenger's uneven cement. She unbuttoned her jacket and then took a seat, crossing one ankle over the other, her hands laced together in her lap. "What would you ask me?"

"Well, certainly you already know," he said, smiling as he sat down across from her.

She shook her head. "No. As your powers have developed you have turned into a blind spot for my own powers. I rather thought you already knew this, why else would you flaunt our wishes and taunt us with insults and accusations?"

"I suspected that you couldn't see me clearly," Danny admitted. "I just wasn't actually counting on it."

She tilted her head. "Then why did you say so many things and do so many things that you knew we would kill you for?"

"Because I was counting on you not being the sort of person that would kill someone just because you don't like what they say," Danny replied.

"It is very good for you that you were wrong about why I did not come after you, because you were very wrong about what kind of person I am," she said deadpan.

He nodded. "You're probably right. But I think I know why your power does not really recognize me, and it's the same reason that I called for you. You see, as I understand your power, it shows you the path to victory, and allows you to walk that path without failure or faltering. But that's an incredibly narrow, limited power. It only works in situations where there's a winner and a loser, combat and competition and challenges. But I'm not about those sort of things, my interests don't lie in defeating my enemies."

"You do rather a lot of it, for someone who is not so inclined," she replied, her eyebrow arching.

"I do, but that's when I have no choice," he conceded, ducking his head to acknowledge her words. "But my preference is for situations where I win, and so does everyone else. I'm not a fighter, I'm a negotiator. I do my best work under flag of truce, or recruiting like-minded individuals, or defusing conflict. Which unfortunately means that there is no path to victory, no perfect method to succeed and defeat the enemy. So, obviously I'm not here to talk to your power, I'm here to talk to _you_. And I have the impression that it's been a long time since anyone talked to you, and not to your power."

"Did your daughter tell you that?" Contessa asked. Her hands scooted down to her knee, lacing over it and drawing her upper body slightly forward.

"She did," he admitted. "This is an important discussion, between the two of us, and I thought it was important to do my homework first."

"Your daughter the mind-reader?" the woman asked, the eyebrow arching higher.

"The same," he said. "Why?"

She took off her fedora and twirled it in her hand. "There are no mind-readers. It is impossible. A brain is by nature more sophisticated than a mind, and a consciousness is less sophisticated than a mind. So for a consciousness to actually understand a brain, would be utterly impossible. No, the Doctor is quite confident that your daughter is retro-cognitive, able to see the past. The opposite of a precognitive, but no less powerful, and able to see someone's secrets and convince that person that their mind has been read."

He combined a shrug and a nod. "Okay, I'll grant it's a good theory, and it explains all the information at hand, so you keep believing that, and I'll keep insisting that she's a mindreader, and we can agree to disagree," he said. "See? We're already making progress, mutual benefit."

"And what else do you intend to get out of this conversation?" she asked.

Danny leaned back and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "Everyone asks each other what they want, even you. That's not quite the right answer. But the world is full of people that never quite ask the right questions, and you're not actually different." He dropped his hand and leaned forward, holding eye contact. "Okay, what I want is for you to leave Cauldron, walk away from Doctor Mother, and abandon your mission."

"Impossible," she said, standing and seating the fedora back onto her head, her shoulders turning as she moved towards the doorway.

"What does your power do if you ask it the wrong question?" he asked.

She paused, staring down at him. "What do you mean?"

"If you ask how to defeat the wrong enemy, or if you ask it how to capture someone you ought to kill, does your power do what you ask of it, or does it know better than you do? You're a human being, fallible. Is your power fallible, or infallible."

She stared at him, blinked twice slowly. "Explain your question. Get to the point."

"Decades ago, you killed a Lovecraftian horror and-"

"A what?"

He blinked in surprise. "A Lovecr-... you know, Cthu-... oh, I get it. You were raised on a different Earth in a different reality, and while you have spent a lot of time in our reality you never really studied culture or literature at all, did you? You just moved from one goal to the next, from one victory to the next. Um, Lovecraft was a writer who specialized in stories about extra-dimensional beings of terrifying power and inscrutable natures, whose minds were unknowable and whose motives were either hostile or inimical to humanity, often with many mouths and eyes and tentacles. Anyway, as I was saying, decades ago you and Doctor Mother worked together to kill a being of seemingly-unlimited power and terrifying form. And you knew that there was another, in our dimension, hiding behind a false face as Scion, the greatest hero in our world. So, you two decided to help us, and your people, and every other human in every version of Earth. And you asked your power how you could defeat Scion. And that set you on a path that created Cauldron. You kidnapped tens of thousands of research subjects. You killed hundreds of thousands of people. You enslaved people, intimidated people, you exploited and vivisected them. You sold superpowers to people, you manipulated world events. All because you asked the wrong specific question."

"I said explain," she demanded, taking a step forward. Her fists were clenched, and her eyebrows were drawn low over her eyes.

"You should have asked how Scion could be defeated," Danny said. "I'm certain your power would have told you to sit back and relax yourself. But instead you asked it how you, you two, could defeat Scion. Because you had not learned a hard lesson that I'm still in the middle of learning: you don't have to do everything yourself. The only way you two could defeat Scion was to create a transdimensional conspiracy of torture and abduction and exploitation and manipulation that compromises every tenet of ethics and law. But other people could defeat Scion without committing genocidal atrocities. There was always a better way to do this, but you never looked because you trusted your power more than you trusted yourself. But I trust you, Fortuna. I trust you more than I trust your power, more than you trust yourself. Let us do this the better way, the way that works for everyone."

She snorted through her nose. "And what? You will talk to Scion and convince him not to destroy the world?"

"You say that like it's hard."

"I say it like... " she trailed off. "You really are entirely serious. That is actually your plan?"

"Of course it is," he said. "Which raises the question: why was that not your first plan? Seriously, when someone is doing something you don't want them to do, the first step is to ask them to stop. Every reasonable person knows that, it's incredibly obvious. But your power thought the only obvious answer was to assassinate the person first, and ask them to stop after. And you just never, ever questioned that. You harvested test subjects and conscripted armies and perverted the course of justice because you never stopped to question whether what you were doing was the only way to accomplish your goal. That's why I wanted to talk to you, not your power, Fortuna. I think you're a decent person who has never been confident in her own opinions enough to speak out."

"You really think that none of it was necessary?" she asked, sinking back down into the chair. "You think we did not need to do anything, to do any of ... what we did?" She shook her head, her dark hair splashing against her cheekbones. "No, it cannot be. Everything that you know is after thirty years of our planning. The world you know has been shaped by our efforts. Your team includes our test subjects and one person who bought their powers from us. We did what we had to do, we could not sit back and hope that someone else, some skinny middle-aged man with a second-tier powerset would save the world for us. We saw the world needed saving and so we took steps. Sooner or later Scion will remember that his purpose in this world is to create and harvest conflict, and he will indulge in conflict himself, against us. He will slaughter billions. We need to defeat him, our way. We did not undertake this lightly, we did not plow ahead without considering our options. We are not stupid children, Wharf Rat. The stakes were too high, we could not afford to rest on our laurels and hope that a savior would sweep in from off-stage and rescue all of us."

"You have a low opinion of how high an opinion I have of myself," he chuckled, shaking his head. "Look, let's loop back to the important point that was brought up. You and the Doctor never stopped to ask if there was a better way. You saw an enemy and you started planning a preemptive attack."

"And you said you'd just ask him nicely not to slaughter all of humanity," she replied, her tone condescending. "You understand that he is alien, yes? That his understanding of our world is not compatible with our own? No communication is possible. He barely understand simple concepts of the physical world, nothing abstract at all. His perceptions are so far above our own that we cannot begin to comprehend him."

"So?"

"So we-" she sputtered to a stop, then threw her arms up in the air and stood up again. "So I give up. I cannot get you to make sense at all. You just called me here to frustrate me."

"How about it I explain my plan to you?" Danny asked. "Would you consider what I say then?"

* * *

The doorway in the air closed up and Danny turned the doorknob, stepping out into the hallway. The team was clustered up by the door, and they cheered as soon as he set foot outside. Uber whooped with joy and picked Danny up to swing him around, and as soon as he was set down Taylor grabbed him in a great big hug that threatened to snap his ribs. Her Panacea-enhanced body was growing ever stronger and more durable. As soon as he could draw air, he wheezed out the words "I guess you guys heard."

"Yeah, we heard that the bogeyman of Cauldron is going to stand down and let us save the world," Pariah said, grinning widely.

Gulliver grinned. "Sorry, once we realized what was going on, they made me snoop in on you." His apology didn't quite get to his smile, but at least he made an effort to look apologetic.

Dinah was standing to the side, beaming as she stood in her own Scavenger costume, black uniform with her hood laying flat on her back. "I can't see your chances of success," she said. "There's way, way too many variables that I can't see at all. But I can't help feeling like it got a bit better for you. This really could work!"

Oni Lee dropped a hand on the preteen's shoulder. "So, now we just need one more piece of the puzzle."

Danny hugged his daughter tight across the shoulders, beaming. "And best of all, this is going to be the only part of the entire plan that is actually easy. But, that can get put off until tomorrow, no worries."

Gambler arched an eyebrow. "There's still a thirty-percent chance this will go wrong. And if you get overconfident, I think that thirty-percent on paper is more like ninety-percent in the field."

"Shut up all of you," Leet demanded, pulling himself up to his full height. "Let's get out of costume, and let's go get some beers!"

"There's four of us that aren't legal to drink," Panacea pointed out to him.

"Let's go get some iced tea!" Leet repeated in the same tone.

The ten of them went to Somer's Rock, the bar that Danny had attended villain conclaves in. The place was half-full, it had gotten a bad reputation but the neighborhood was revitalizing. The twin bartenders were still fast and efficient, the deaf waitress made sure they needn't worry about being overheard when they talked their business. Leet slipped a couple hundred bucks, and the waitress was able to get them the back of the bar to themselves, separated from the rest of the bar patrons by a bank of televisions that were showing the the Big Game for the cheering fans.

Dinah sniffed at her glass. "I think she mixed up my iced tea with yours, Uber." Uber reached over to hand the girl her sweetened iced tea and take the Long Island version for himself.

"So, I suppose you heard that I was chatting with one of our prospective buyers today," Leet said, looking across the table towards Danny. "I just assume that you hear everything with your rats."

"I did. And I need to teach you how to negotiate for yourself, you let them drive the price way too far down," Danny chuckled.

"And you know why I did that," Leet prompted. "And why it would have been a conflict of interest for you to talk on my behalf."

"I do," Danny said, still smiling. "And I appreciate it."

Salvage poked the tall man. "Spill it, boss, what's going on?"

"Scavenger Industries got a buyout offer, and accepted it," Leet answered for him. "The new owners will be allowing us to keep all our current quarters and equipment, as well as our jobs for any of us that still want them. It's the Dockworkers Association, Wharf Rat's employers before he joined the Protectorate."

"Oh, no shit?" Salvage said. "That's pretty awesome!" Today he was wearing long sleeves and gloves, and was a normal-sized man rather than a little person. Pariah glared at him from time to time, because she didn't want to glare at Gambler for having grown enough that Pariah was now the shortest on the team.

Uber was grinning widely. "Ah, here's to going back to making video games! I've got an idea for a new game mechanic, a third-person platformer where your enemy actually is the camera, for real this time. And a survival-horror game where you direct the action by yelling at the game the way people yell at horror movies, all like 'no don't run upstairs you idiot!' and 'look out he's behind you!' and stuff like that."

"So when is all of this going to go down?" Taylor asked.

"What?" Danny asked.

"You're either playing dumb, or being dumb," she said, quirking her lips in a wry grin. "Neither one looks cute on you."

He nodded. "Oh, that. About seventy-two hours. We're going to need to make sure we're entirely prepared before then," he said.

"Psssh," Salvage scoffed with scorn. "What's to prepare? We're gonna sit back and let you handle the hard stuff, then we stand up when it's time to hand out trophies."

Danny chuckled. "Honestly, that's probably the right attitude. This either works easily, or it turns into horrible tragedy and disaster. Why bother yourself worrying when the stakes are that dire? But, not worrying doesn't mean not preparing. We should come up with some backup plans, and muster our resources."

Gambler rolled her eyes. "Thank god. I was starting to worry that I was the only one taking this seriously. I still miss Trainwreck, and Circus. We can't forget them, can't start getting careless."

"Maybe we should muster the Auxiliary?" Oni Lee asked. "Nobody knows they exist, they could be a great ace in the hole."

Danny looked unconvinced. "We only just put them together, rushing them straight into a mission seems like bad form. Besides, I think we're going to need that element of surprise later, we should keep them in reserve."

"Reserve for what?" Salvage asked. "C'mon, this is the home stretch. We get the Boston girl, we go after the big girl, then it's Scion himself. There's no way that any element of surprise is going to make a lick of difference. Either we win or we lose, and element of surprise and a dozen extra hands aren't going to help with this. If they don't help now, they won't help later."

"Emergency reserves," Uber said. "C'mon, we wait for the emergency."

"Table that issue, let's talk about other measures we might take. I'm going to be working on uniforms," Pariah said. "I can get a higher concentration of nanotubes into the fabric, I can make it tougher and more protective."

Uber nodded. "I intend to be on the rooftops with my Widow. Snipers are always an asset to a street battle."

"I kind of wish there was something I could do ahead of the fight to help out," Gambler grumped, stirring ice cubes in her glass. "Some trick that would let me help more during the fights."

Leet patted the girl's shoulder. "Don't sweat it, squirt, you're already the MVP on this team. You're doing more than we could ask of you, and just because you're already giving as much as you can is no reason to be disappointed."

"Pariah and I have been working on a trick," Salvage said. "I build my body up, using fabric and jagged metal or broken glass or something. I fight like that for a while, no big deal, then on a signal she starts pouring her telekinetic energy into the fabric in one arm. I hold it in, restrain it, and then I let go all at once so my arm explodes. Plus, it makes good material for me to build up with, and also it lets me transport more cloth for her to use."

"Nice," Panacea said, nodding. "I've been thinking about rat upgrades. Neurotoxin, regeneration, maybe some sort of jamming signals to shut down mental powers. It's doable if I get a chance to study the subject."

"I can barely control the full range of rats and mice as it is," Danny said. "No gerbils, no squirrels, voles, capybara, nothing like that. I think that my powers have a pretty strict definition of what they will and won't effect. I wouldn't be surprised if neurotoxin rats slip right out of my control. Still, it's probably worth a shot."

"If you're looking to make upgrades, I could use a few," Taylor said. "I've made a list."

"I've seen your list," Panacea retorted. "You want me to remove the limiting governors from your cerebellum so that you can activate your full adrenaline strength at any time. And also to weave organic carbon nanotubes into your tendons and ligaments to increase their tensile strength. And to reposition your muscular insertions for maximum leverage. Among other things. I can't do anything to your brain, stop asking. I can't do molecular chemistry, I do organic chemistry. And if I remix your muscular insertions you will stop looking human, and also you'll lose a lot of flexibility and comfort for a small boost in strength."

"This shit right here?" Leet said to Pariah, jabbing a thumb at Panacea and Taylor. "This shit is why I won't go for any upgrades. You ever know those people that get one tattoo and then they get addicted and they keep getting tattoos until they'll never have a day job again? Yeah, it's like that."

"How about kangaroo heels?" Taylor said. "C'mon, you said it seemed feasible, whaddya say?"

Gulliver sighed. "I think maybe it's time I carried guns. Rubber bullets only, or beanbags or whatever they are. But I need something bigger and more versatile than these stunguns I've been using. A pair of nine-millimeters should do it."

"Ah, come with me son," Uber said, smiling broadly. "I will teach you much about the ways of choosing and customizing a handgun."

"Too late to change my mind?" Gulliver gulped.

"Look, if you're that damned eager," Leet said to Taylor, "I can do some stuff with your armor. Those pods on it are made to be modular, and they're surprisingly versatile. I can whip up some new tricks, something custom-built for this fight, and maybe plug those into your armor."

"I think I'd like that," she said. "It helps to have options."

Oni Lee tapped the tinker on his shoulder. "Do you suppose I could borrow that bomb satchel of yours? I may need something with real punch at range."

"Sure thing, I'm sitting this one out. It's been pretty cool sitting out the field missions, you know that? Uber and I used to go out on every mission together, and while I loved the jobs and working with someone that really understood me, there were times it really sucked. During downtime I spent all my time building and working, putting in hundreds of hours. And then during missions I was basically dead weight. I got hurt a lot. Now, sitting back away from the fights, I get to see my stuff field-tested, get to help out with cool missions, and I don't get the scabs and bruises I used to. So yeah, if you want the bomb satchel, have at it."

Uber slammed another shot. "Me, on the other hand, best of both worlds all the time. I'm out in the field, with all the excitement, and during downtime I'm still helpful, still with the training and the hacking and the strategizing. It's a pretty cool life I've got here with the Scavengers. And I want to thank Danny for bringing me in. I could've gone to jail. I could've been sent packing like Faultline. I could have gotten killed, even. But instead, Danny here decided that he saw potential in me and Leet. He talked to Kaiser about a contract with us. And then he asked us if we were getting what we wanted. He talked some sense into us, told us to do what we want instead of staying on the wrong path. To the Wharf Rat!" he raised his beer, and a wave of other glasses raised up to clink against his, toasting their leader.

"He taught me to make my own decisions and look for the future, not the past," Pariah said, holding her glass to the others.

"He got me to the people that could rebuild me as a person," Oni Lee added.

"He taught me how to help people without giving away every part of myself," Panacea said, her voice more grim than they were used to hearing from her.

"He got me out from under the Empire," Gulliver said quietly.

"He gave me a place after Cauldron dropped me off and Lamia abducted me," Salvage said.

"He saved me from Coil," Gambler sounded a bit sad as she considered what her life would have been without his intervention.

"He's always been there for me," Taylor said. "To my father." And then the Scavengers finished their toast and drank.

"Now then, let's talk about Boston," Danny said, uncomfortable but gratified. "I'll be scouting, obviously, and handling backup. Gambler's taking care of the timing. Our boots on the ground are Uber, Panacea and Benthic. All three for threat elimination, threat assessment, and transport."

Pariah chuckled. "I really don't miss having to build those wings to take us everywhere. That Chariot kid earned his keep a hundred percent when he built that teleporter. But Uber, you're good at everything, why don't you ever get into the mission planning?"

"No wait!" Leet blurted out, but it was too late, Uber was already puking onto the floor beside his chair. "Awesome," Leet grumbled.

The rest of the Scavengers jumped up and backed away, making various noises of surprise or disgust. "What happened?" Panacea said, moving to the man's side to cure what ailed him.

"Have you been watching him?" Leet asked. "He's been pounding shots like crazy, all night. He switched his power over so he'd be an expert at holding his liquor. I've seen him do it before, and yes that's really a thing. Then Pariah asked him for a tactical assessment, and he switched his power over before he thought about it. And now he's not an expert in holding his liquor."

"I wanna die," Uber groaned, slumped on the floor.

"I know," Panacea said, patting his shoulder. "I know."

Leet started tugging hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet. "Okay, let's get him out of here and I'll pay for the damages, I'll meet you guys back at the factory. We can talk more about dealing with the Fallen, and Blasto and Morrigan, from there."

 _Author's note: thanks go to the Nachoman for fact-checking my information about carbon nanotubules. I have made adjustments to the story as needed. I was tempted to handwave it off by saying that it "makes comic book logic", but that's not really what this setting is about. And thanks also go to Star Iron, who preemptively pointed out that I was steering this story in a darker direction for no good reason. Character deaths are powerful moments, if they serve a purpose. This series is almost done now, and it's already nearly as long as a trilogy of novels. I thank everyone who reads this far and enjoyed it. I know that time and attention are finite resources, and you chose to spend yours with me. I am flattered._


	22. Chapter 22

The bus was extravagant, the sort used by pampered millionaire musicians when they were touring. It was more of narrow apartment with wheels under it than anything else, perfect for an entitled arrogant monster and her entourage. And it was parked outside the Drake Hotel in Boston, which had just thrown out Chevy Chase to clear out the penthouse suite for the new visitors. This was a very unusual thing for the management of the hotel to do, certainly. Half the hotel's staff was in attendance, standing at the position of attention all along the south wall. The maids would bustle about to clean after their guests immediately, the concierge was serving drinks continuously, bellhops were running errands or rearranging the suite to the satisfaction of their new guest. Room service was arriving continuously, bringing the best the kitchens could create.

Valefor lounged on the white satin couch, his boots up on the matching ottoman. He was wearing a costume designed to emulate the Simurgh, his pale skin powdered even whiter where it showed. He wore a white leather corset that cinched his waist to feminine proportions, and a white skirt-like kilt with gauzy feathery white fringe that could be thought of as looking like broad white wings wrapped around his waist. He wore a couple of sleeves strapped on with no shirt, the sleeves dripping with gauzy white feathers as well. His mask was feathered, flared about his face to draw attention to his eyes. His lipstick was smeared away, mostly left behind on the oversized turkey-leg drumstick that lay on the floor beside the lamp and the huge fishbowl goblet of wine that was balanced on the corner of the couch arm. "Now this," he declared, "is living."

Eligos nodded and burped. He was stocky despite his medium height, his costume made almost entirely of black leather bands that crisscrossed, overlapped, buckled to each other and bolted in place, until they were a thick leather sheath several layers thick. His gloves and mask sat to the side, but near at hand. The mask was a full-face helmet with a dozen horns projecting from the faceplate, slightly curved, with a neckpiece that was built up like a crash helmet to absorb great force. The gloves were stiff and misshapen, as useless as the real Behemoth's hands, but built in with tazers to emulate the Endbringer's powers over lightning. He leaned against the wet bar, drinking the oldest Scotch on the premises because he knew that old Scotch was good Scotch, and watched as a couple of the more attractive linen maids danced clumsily together.

Crocell was the only Leviathan-themed member of the Fallen left, the others had shifted their costumes months ago after the death of Leviathan. But Crocell was loyal, and also very committed to the theme because his powers were particularly suited to that Endbringer. And that was why he was so determined to be part of this mission, to kill the people responsible for the death of his idol. He was shirtless, with green scales tattooed over his torso and arms. He wore heavy gauntlets with long bladelike claws on the fingertips, painted the same green. His mask was gauzy Lycra, green with red baleful eyes painted on, one on one side and three on the other side. From the waist down he wore blue jeans, motorcycle boots and a leather belt with metal pyramids. He did not partake like the others or enjoy his surroundings, he just sat on a stool with his arms resting on his knees.

Marchosias was also modeled on the Simurgh, but she did it by simply wearing a white body-stocking and wearing a floor-length white cape with scalloped edges to look like flight feathers, bleaching her hair white and wearing a silver tiara shaped to look like a crown of wings arcing up from her scalp. She was a pinch-faced woman, unhealthily skinny with a sadistic gleam in her eyes all the time. She was presently sampling every delicacy the kitchen sent up, taking a nibble from each plate and chewing thoroughly before spitting the food back out onto the plate and complaining loudly, as if her refined palate was offended by these offerings. Her accent was small-town deep-south, but without the usual soft tones and charming warmth.

"We're wasting time," Crocell grumbled. "You three are just drinking and eating instead of getting ready. We're going to have to delay a whole day just so you can sleep off your little party."

"We're gonna gather intel," Valefor replied. "We just got to the city, we can't go straight from the bus to a battle, now can we? We need to be rested up and ready before we free the demigod." He smirked as his words earned a rough glare from Crocell.

Marchosias waved an indolent hand. "The prophet will be there tomorrow, Crocell, and then we can take her to get revenge on those who killed Leviathan. Don't-" she was interrupted when a mass-driver sniper rifle shot a milligram sliver of iron through the window at supersonic speeds. The speed of the thing created enough air friction that the heat it generated was incandescent white, the air molecules stripping off its electrons as it passed to create an arc of lightning that circled around what looked like a flash of white laser-light. But the heat, the light, the sonic boom, and the electricity were all for show, the real danger was the sliver of iron in the center of all of this, that penetrated Marchosias's head at the center of the back of her skull and drilled through in an instant, leaving an entrance and exit wound the size of a pinhole, before the kinetic energy expanded out through her brain tissues and cracked her skull into hundreds of slivers. The heat bleed-off into her gray matter vaporized it hard and added enough overpressure that the skin and membranes tore away and her head literally exploded, showering everyone in the room with brain chips and steaming meat before the broken glass had time to fall.

"That's the reality warper," Uber said, waiting for the sniper rifle to quit beeping its cooldown cycle. He took aim as the other Fallen scrambled for cover. "Next priority is the Stranger."

"On it," Benthic said, as she kicked open the heavy wooden double doors. Brass deadbolt parts rained down across the carpet as she stalked forward, rats sweeping in like a living carpet of brown fur. Eligos cast back his hand to throw a blade of sharpened wind at her, but the rats shot forward, using their massed bodies to hit him at the ankles and knock him to the floor. Crocell concentrated and felt out for the water in the pipes of the walls. He didn't have enough strength to just rip the water out through the pipes or wreck them with his hydrokinesis, but his power did have an unusual wrinkle to it, a subpower of thermohydrokinesis. He felt the joints in the pipes with his power, then he froze the water tight in the pipes for several feet above and below the joint. Then, he took the center of that ice and converted it to steam, bursting the pipes and melting the ice. He waved his hand about, and the water flowing from the broken pipes punched through the sheetrock and collected in the air, forming a sphere above his palm that hovered in the air. Streams of water poured out of the pipes and fed into the sphere, expanding it all the time. He spared a gallon of water to sluice over his body, forming a layer much like the Leviathan's after-image. Meanwhile Benthic was striding straight for Valefor, who was pressed flat against a pillar to shield him from the sniper, glaring straight at her eyes and barking out orders for her to stop, to kill herself, to jump out the window, anything. She raised her sword and swatted him with the flat of the blade, dropping him in place. His power worked through eye contact, easy enough to foil if one simple switched one's visor from regular vision to sonar projection. "Stranger's down, next is the hydrokinetic."

"On it," Panacea repeated, and punched Crocell in the back of his head. Her suit slipped out of camouflage, moving quickly to lunge forward and slam him with a fist the size of a Thanksgiving turkey. He was knocked out of his after-image and sent flying, hitting the ground in a heap of stunned limbs before he started pulling himself upright. A half-dozen stingers the size of knitting needles were lodged in his back, pumping him full of sedatives, and he collapsed after getting himself only halfway to his feet. Eligos froze where he was, darting his eyes from the armored swordswoman, to the giant chitinous monster, to the window where the sniper shot had come from. He raised his hands to shoulder-height and told them everything they wanted to know.

* * *

The knock came three times, sharp and loud. The Hispanic man startled at the sound, and looked around his lab as if to count how many major felonies he was presently guilty of, and measure the weapons available to him against the risks of using them. He laid his hand on the table, and came up with a weapon that looked like a high-pressure caulk gun, and a rat clinging to it, staring him right in the face. The man stared back at the rodent, then set the weapon down amidst the clutter of the lab. Every surface was covered in papers or dishes, three or four computers spaced out across the tables and counters were half-buried in specimen samples and potted plants of a wild variety. And as his eyes swept around, he noticed things out of place; dozens of rats stood or crouched all around, all staring straight at him. And then the knock came to his door again.

"I think I'll just be answering that," he said, keeping his hands raised in a position of surrender that seemed almost casual or nonchalant. He turned and walked up the stairs, to the front door, aware that from every angle there was a rodent staring at him. He unlocked, unchained, and unbolted the front door, and tried a half-smile as he greeted the parahumans on his doorstep. One was wearing a full set of Scavenger black, a full head taller than the scientist with broad shoulders and obvious muscles, the other wore deep blue powered armor that featured sleek pods half-projecting from the surface at her shoulders, hips, forearms and thighs. "Afternoon," he said, trying to show how nonthreatening he was.

"This is Blasto?" the big man in black asked.

"For the last time, it has nothing to do with blasting anything," said a voice from the right side, and a massive figure he could not really make out sidled closer to the door. It looked like a distortion in the air, some sort of real-time camouflage. "Sir, would you be so kind as to invite us in?"

"Yeah, I think I should," he said meekly, stepping back. "Would you like something to drink? A look at my work? How can I help the Scavengers today?"

"First of all, tell your lab assistant to stop dialing that phone," the armored woman said.

Blasto grimaced, and turned to call over his shoulder, yelling something out in Spanish. The homunculus loped forward out of the kitchen, glaring at the interlopers.

The distortion in the air solidified, showing itself as a hunched figure nearly eight feet tall, with heavy chitinous plating covering its body, thick limbs showing obvious power and strength. Its face looked sinister and threatening, with long teeth and black staring eyes and jagged tearing talons on its wide-palmed hands. But its vicious appearance was belied by the tone of voice it spoke in, its gnashing mouth and guttural throat somehow shaping words that sounded calm and reasonable. "Sir, we intercepted a contingent of the Fallen in this city, who had arrived with the purpose of killing you. Four of them, and some of them were particularly dangerous, high-ranking members of that group. And I think you know what they were here for."

Blasto sagged a bit, leaning on the railing of the staircase. "Yeah, I think so. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, really. Some things just don't stay secret, not in this world of ours. I have to admit I never really considered the Fallen, though. They worship the Endbringers, right?"

"Right, and as far as they're concerned you're holding the daughter of the last god as a hostage in your lab," Panacea said. "It's like their prophet or demigod. And they want her. And they'll keep sending people until they have her, or she's dead, or they're dead. Now, we've given you a headstart with four Fallen captured or dead, but without our protection you probably won't be able to hold them off. And if you do, you'll have mustered so much force that the PRT will finally label you as a Class-S threat."

Blasto winced. "I sure don't want that. This is a bad year to be a Class-S threat. Two Endbringers down, Slaughterhouse Nine, then Nilbog dead... I understand that the Protectorate is looking at ways to take out the Ash Beast permanently, after that it's just the Simurgh, the Sleeper and the Blasphemies. I sure as hell don't want that kind of force coming down on me, no thanks."

The armored woman nodded. "Now, we came here to take Morrigan away from you. I hope you can understand that a hybrid Endbringer is far, far too dangerous to keep in this environment, or to keep at all."

Uber chuckled. "Classic Ian Malcolm moment. You were so concerned with whether you could do the thing that you never stopped to ask yourself if you should."

Blasto sighed, shaking his head. "People find out you do genetic engineering, all they want to do is quote Jurassic Park at you. Whatever. Are you going to kill her here, or are you at least going to spare me the need to clean up after?"

A hologram projected from out of Benthic's chestplate, hovering in the air in the middle of the group, six inches tall. "Actually, Blasto," the Wharf Rat said. "We've got a bit of a job for her. We need a little help saving the world."

"Help me, Obi-Wan," Blasto snickered. "Wait, run that back and say it again. You need my Morrigan to help save the world?"

The Wharf Rat nodded. "Exactly. She is uniquely suited to the job, I think that literally nobody else in the world could pull this off. The fact that she is also an incipient threat to you and everyone else in Boston is just a two-bird-one-stone situation for us. One of the guiding principles of the Scavengers is that we try to turn potential liabilities into actual assets, recruiting villains as heroes and turning our enemy's weapons into our weapons. Or in this case, turning a hybrid Endbringer into a key element of our goal to save the world."

Blasto straightened up. "Well, I'm part of this world too. If you need help saving it, then I'm ready to help."

The hologram projection sighed, and its shoulders sagged. "Look, Blasto, it's not that we don't trust you. But you have made your living with petty theft, extortion, and violence. Your powers are explicitly about creation, and you chose to use them for criminal enterprise."

"Now hold on!" Blasto blurted, coming off the railing. "This wasn't my choice! It's illegal to use tinker powers for profit, especially bio-tinkers! They made it illegal for me to use my powers constructively!"

"It's also illegal for you to use your powers destructively, but that didn't stop you," the little man made of light said. "But look, that's really neither here nor there. The only single thing we need to finish out our plan, is Morrigan. We'll try to keep her comfortable and at ease, and if she seems like she could be redeemed and reformed we may wind up returning her to you, it depends on a whole lot of different factors. But Blasto, if you're really serious about using your powers for good instead of personal enrichment, then consider moving to Brockton Bay. I'm sure it'll be a matter of time before someone takes you to court for violating the statutes against parahumans interfering in human development. But if it happens in our courts, I think you've also got a great shot at getting a jury nullification."

Uber spoke up. "That's what happens when a jury decides that the accused is not guilty of a crime because the law itself is in the wrong. I can hire some very, very good lawyers for you, and the residents of Brockton Bay tend to be really understanding of parahumans integrating into society. It started with the PRT director, Piggot, who worked really hard at the PR of this sort of thing, then the next director was a professional PR flack. After that, people got used to the Wharf Rat being everywhere and involved in everything, defeating Class-S threats two at a time. Now we own factories and move the local economy. It's a good town to get a friendly jury."

Blasto looked torn. "I mean, I get what you're saying, but... I've got a really good lab here. Accord set it up for me just before you guys killed him. I can't walk away from an asset like that. Maybe I can start making arrangements to transport it, and move myself over there in a few weeks?"

Wharf Rat considered it. "That may be just fine, actually. I fully expect that by then those NEPEA laws will be a lot more toothless anyway."

"Why is that?" Blasto asked.

Benthic raised one hand, finger extended and wagging. "Ah-ah-ah! No hints, let him learn at the same time as everyone else," she admonished her father. "Gambler's estimates get a lot uglier if we go talking about this stuff."

Danny rolled his eyes so much it was obvious even through his mask. He was eager to tell and share, he wanted to tell Blasto about their plans. That soon the laws against parahumans involving themselves in human society were going to be nearly meaningless, because they would be routinely broken by the parahuman that nobody was ever going to arrest or fine or censure at all. And if he could get away with it, it created a legal foot in the door for others to violate those laws and get away with it. But instead he shut down his hologram and let his daughter and the other two Scavengers make the arrangements to pick up Morrigan.

When he had heard descriptions of Morrigan, he had expected a girl. Five years old, maybe twelve like Gambler. Instead what he got was a seven-foot-tall figure whose age was impossible to place at all, as close to fourteen as she was to forty. Her face was wide and round with close-set eyes, not very attractive features, but her brown hair fell to her knees in a long straight sweep, and her brown eyes were overlarge in their sockets, seeming to bulge slightly. Her brown-feathered wings were folded close against her back but the top of them still extended a full foot above her head. She followed Blasto down the stairs from her room, stepping carefully with her lip between her teeth in concentration. Her clothes looked more like bedsheets that had been conscripted to garment duty. Between her height and wings it would be hard to find clothing to fit her. So her outfit seemed to be a wrap skirt and a long broad scarf wrapped and woven around her torso to keep her decent, both in autumnal earth tones that did a good job of complementing her colors.

She swept her eyes across the three Scavengers, looking at them with detached curiousity, and they stared back at her. Benthic spoke first. "This is the first time you've seen anyone with powers like your own," she said.

Morrigan nodded, her features mild and disinterested to the point of being blank and expressionless. "Only him," she said, gesturing to Blasto.

"You understand that you are dangerous?" the young heroine asked.

"I do," Morrigan acceded.

"And you are unknown, unpredictable," Benthic added. "And you understand what kind of position that puts people in, right?"

"I do," the tall winged woman said. "If I threaten them, I will need to be killed. It is not my fault I scare them, nor is it their fault that they are scared. But what I am is dangerous in a way that does not allow them to take many risks."

Benthic nodded, a bit sadly now. "You should not be, Morrigan. But maybe the world can find room for you, maybe there is a way for you to live safely with the rest of us."

Blasto looked back and forth between them, trying to measure the atmosphere, then turned to Morrigan. "Okay, Em, I'm going to send you with these people. Help them, and take care of them, as best you can. And I hope that they'll bring you back to me so I can keep taking care of you. Okay?"

"Okay," the tall woman said calmly.

"And you guys," he turned to the Scavengers, "try to take care of her. She doesn't know a lot, and she has huge powers that she has barely any experience with. But the important thing is that you guys save the world. Do that."

"We will," Panacea said, nodding. "Now, we need some open space, we should get back out onto the street."

* * *

Morrigan walked the halls, watching everything around her with the same even, detached interest that reminded Taylor of Oni Lee only a couple of months ago. The tall winged woman stared at the factory workers that shared the walkways with the Scavengers, most of whom minded their own business and did not stare back. Working in a parahuman-owned tinkertech factory that was also headquarters to an active hero team created some very jaded employees very quickly. The corridors included shelves well above head-height on both sides of the walkway that were wide enough for rats to walk along without getting into anyone's way, watching all the comings and goings. Then the three parahumans and the hybrid Endbringer turned down a central hallway that ended in a formidable-looking door and a gap in the wall that led to a dark opening. Uber took off his glove as they approached, and put a bare hand into the opening, holding it there for a second before the door opened up and admitted them.

The half-Endbringer stepped in with the others, looking all around her. Panacea reshaped her Crawler-suit, opening it up so she could step out. She wore only a light undersuit beneath it, made of the same flesh and imbued with the same powers but much thinner and more comfortable. Benthic unclasped her helmet and tugged it off, then started the disengage sequence to release the rest of her armor while Uber pushed back his hood and started unzipping the nanotube-infused fabric that Pariah had made for him. Morrigan shrugged and started unlooping the scarves from around her body, before Uber realized what she was doing and stopped her. He showed how the rest of them were just stripping down to their comfortable casual wear, and Morrigan was already wearing that.

From the other end of the corridor, Taylor was pulling her father aside. "I'm not wild about bringing her here," she stage-whispered. "She's still growing, learning, evolving at a fast rate. She could easily go unstable and without her father we've got almost no way to restrain her at all."

Danny nodded. "I understand. But compared to the sacrifices I expected us to make to save the world... this seems pretty manageable."

"What sort of sacrifices?" Pariah asked, walking up on them.

He blew out a long breath. "Well, our lives. I honestly thought a lot more of us would be dead by this point. I've worked hard to keep everyone safe, I've scouted ahead and I've made the safe calls and checked in with Gambler and I've always worked to find us the plan that involved the least danger. But even when things went wrong, we were luckier than we could have expected. We lost Circus, and Trainwreck... Mouse Protector, even. But it makes me think about how many we'd have to lose before I would stop trying. I... tend to lose myself when I'm thinking about the big picture. I can get caught up in what I'm doing. I have to stop and ask myself if I'm still doing the right thing, because I'm not sure I'd stop if I was doing the wrong thing. Would I keep pushing this plan if half the team were dead? If half the city was dead? If you two were both dead?" He paused, caught his breath, and shuddered. "I don't know. I just really don't know."

"We have been through a lot," Pariah pointed out. "Lamia, the Slaughterhouse Nine, the Elite, the Fallen, the Empire Eighty-Eight, Accord. Most superhero teams would be proud of even one of those accomplishments, and they would consider their career to be worthwhile just for having one of those successes. If Myrddin or Chevalier ever took down one of the Class-S threats, they would probably announce their retirement because there wouldn't be anyplace to go after that. But you kept going, and you've done even more. You rebuilt the city, you've helped your friends, you've cleared corruption out of the PRT. You're convincing Cauldron to quit its operations. And you're going to save the world." She patted his shoulder. "Look, you feel a bit down. People died. Friends died, people you've had drinks with and rescued again and again. But I don't want to hear you talk like this was wasted or that we didn't accomplish anything. Got it, old man?"

Danny looked up, half-smiling. "Where is this coming from?"

"It's coming from someone who gets stronger every time things go wrong, like you showed me," she said, crossing her arms. "I was a marshmallow, I would fall apart if I didn't imagine that people liked me. Now look at me! I am, at least, a rice-crispy treat. And you taught it to me. So I have to wonder why you're sitting here at your desk, acting like the world is falling apart because a thirteen-year-old girl quit the team and you didn't like the reason she gave for it. Fuck, Rat, you've still got your own daughter on the team. She knows she can quit, but she stays. And you know damn well that nothing matters except that, right? Not what Gambler does, or Uber, or even me. Right?"

"Right," he said, scrubbing at his face with his hands. "This is for Taylor, and as long as she's on board, it's all worthwhile."

Taylor grinned and hugged him around the waist. "Sweet of you to say. But I'm not going to pretend like I'm more important than the world."

"And Gulliver's still with you, and Oni Lee," Pariah continued. "And I'm gonna stick this out for a while too. I've been with you since Leviathan, it'd be ridiculous to leave now. So it's okay if you have a little crisis of conscience, if you lose faith in yourself. Because plenty of the rest of us have faith in you."

Danny stood up and grinned at her. "I'm glad to hear that."

"Good," the fashion designer turned hero said. "Now, can I tell you one thing, and ask for one thing, without ruining the message of what I just said?"

He stared at her a second, his grin fading and falling. "Sure, shoot."

"The Fallen killed Flechette day before yesterday, she was their first target on their revenge-killing for Leviathan," Sabah said, her head dropping forward. "Can I get a hug?"

Danny wrapped up the young woman in a hug and held her while she cried for the girl she had loved and left and lost. Taylor stepped in and helped comfort her teammate.

* * *

"Sounds like you're damn close," Barry said, filling up a paper cup with water from the water cooler. Danny was standing by in civilian clothes, out of uniform for the first time since they'd left Somer's Rock with Uber falling-down drunk and Leet laughing about it.

"Yeah," Danny said, frowning. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned against the rough concrete wall. "It's going to get harder, real hard, for a while here. But it's almost over. I've just got a couple more jobs to do, and then I'm hanging it up. I've had a good run, I can retire after a good run like that."

"Retire?" Barry scoffed. "Danny-man, it's only been about six months since you handed me your two-week notice. You've only been doing this hero thing for just about half a year."

"I was doing some hero stuff before I gave notice," Danny pointed out, a bit defensively. "And I was in training for months before that."

"Okay, so, let's say you take your time fading out, finishing these last couple jobs, handing off the reins to your replacement. That's still a year, Danny. We've had people take off a year as a vacation. This hasn't been a lifetime of work here, The Year of the Rat. And you're acting like it's going to be a major transition, retiring." Barry pulled himself up tall and stared Danny right in the eyes. "Look, maybe you're just done pushing yourself as hard as you've been pushing, yeah? From here on out, you split your time. Some Wharf Rat, some Danny Hebert, some Taylor's Dad. You don't have to walk away forever, and nothing's permanent if you don't want it to be. You're famous, world-famous, Danny. You're an icon among parahumans. Word is that you give _Legend_ little "keep up the good work" pep talks. So yeah, that's pressure, and it's okay to want out from under it for a while."

"Okay, that was not the kind of pep talk it was," Danny objected.

"Oh shit, I thought that rumor was absolutely false," Barry laughed. "You mean it really did happen?"

"Not like that," Danny said, taking down his glasses and polishing them. "It was just that the Protectorate is going through a hard time, and it needs him as a stable anchor. So if he needed someone to talk to-"

Barry cut him off with his laughter, and Danny laughed too. He put the glasses back on, they were just plain glass and didn't actually help his vision, Panacea had fixed his eyes a while ago. But the glasses were part of Danny Hebert. "So, Barry, tell me about owning this factory."

"Well, actually the owners of the factory are Solidarity Holdings, LLC," Barry said. "It's a company that was created, chartered, funded and chaired by the Dockworkers. The Dockworkers Association doesn't actually own the factory, that would be illegal as hell. But creating a company specifically to own the factory, run the factory, and distribute all profits to the Dockworkers, that actually is pretty legal. Well, anything generated as profit after reinvestment I should say, they're looking to buy more factories so they can generate more profit and distribute that too. And, they may expand the profit-sharing to all the employees and not just the dockworkers. It's a damn good market for it, we're lucky that the new mayor has been making the moves he has been. Local economy and cost of living put us in a good place for manufacturing and export."

"Yeah, Accord's binders really helped with that," Danny chuckled. He caught Barry's puzzled glance, and explained. "I killed an evil thinker who knew how to end poverty and crime and stuff like that. I took his research and gave it to the mayor, and he's been using that. That's why the city's been doing so well."

"But you killed him."

"Really evil, trust me."

"Okay, it just seems like a stretch," Barry shrugged. "Though, I am pretty surprised by how okay I am with you talking about killing people."

Danny froze up, and he remembered Trainwreck and Circus, and Mouse Protector, their blood and deaths. "Well, sometimes," Danny said. "Sometimes it's okay, and sometimes it's not."

"Noted," the accountant said. "Now then, let's go meet Kurt and Lacey, and get some drinks. You should bring Taylor."

* * *

The doorway opened, showing the brightly-lit white hallway, and the woman in the lab coat. "Afternoon," Danny said.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Hebert," she said, with the soft consonants of a French accent. "Why have you called today?"

He stepped forward through the doorway, and stood in the hallway with her. "I have called to ask you to shut it down," he said.

"I may have little choice soon. Contessa has told me that she will not be conscripting any more test subjects, or helping me to harvest more materials, or taking punitive measures to maintain our operation. There are a group of Case 53s, the errors of our trial and error, who have begun collecting together to discuss their plight, and they are also speaking to some of our former customers. I asked Contessa to show them the error of their ways, but leave them alive. She refused. She said that she was not willing to do violence to innocents to cover for our own-" she paused, checked her clipboard, flipped a few pages, "-shortsighted arrogance, is how she put it. Without her, I could rely more on the Number Man, but he has begun to show his own doubts about our mission. And while I have mechanisms to brainwash anyone, this job would become unbearably tedious if I had only drones to support me."

"Not to mention it would reflect badly on your operation if they only way you could maintain it was through coercive force," he pointed out.

"But I have thought about what you said," she went on, only grimacing slightly. "About my being a closet narcissist or egomaniac-"

"I never said closet," he said. "I said that it was very obvious to anyone who ever checked to see if there were big red flags."

"- _as I was saying_ ," she said through gritted teeth. "I think you draw a very big conclusion from a small detail, if anything an insignificant detail. How far must you be reaching, if you are willing to excuse what you characterize as abduction, torture, brainwashing, mutilation and vivisection, but you seem to think that tattooing someone is a bridge too far, the straw that broke the camel's back."

"First of all, I don't excuse those things, I just understand that you think you can excuse those things," he said. "You have convinced yourself that you need test subjects, so you abduct them because you think nobody would undertake this willingly. Then you test your formulas, disfiguring them, because you are convinced that is the key to assembling the army to save the world. Then you keep them alive in inhumane captivity, but you excuse it because you think it is more humane than killing them and cremating them. Then you decide to let them free, because that is more humane than captivity. Then you brainwash them, because you believe that your secrets are important and you can only justify releasing your prisoners if they cannot share your secrets. All of these are tenuously justified, clumsily rationalized, but there is a point of view where these things can make sense. Maybe some of them are just ill-advised and you are continuing bad policies out of habit. But up to this point, in your own mind you could twist those to be required, sensible steps. And then you brand them, so that when they are released into the world they will know that it was no accident that they were abducted, mutilated, brainwashed, and dumped. Why the brand? What possible excuse for that is there, other than to torment their minds and make sure that legends of you grow in hushed whispers?"

"And this is your justification for wanting to shut down the world's best chance at salvation?" Doctor Mother protested. "We have done great things, astounding research, amazing secrets. We have created a network of high-powered heroes who stand ready to help us against our enemy. We have assembled enough clout and influence that we can pull the major power players of the world into a single cohesive network and multiply our power many times over. But all you can think of is the tattoos?"

"Never trust a skinny chef," Danny said. "A proverb on my version of Earth, does your world have that?"

"No," she said.

"Well, Doctor, you have not taken your own formulas. Would you care to tell me why?"

"That is hardly appro-"

"This is why I refused to step into your office in the first place," he sighed. "You just deflect what you don't like. It helps keep you cryptic and inscrutable, it helps keep the mystique that you need so badly. It makes you unquestionable and irreproachable. But you are not a world-class scientist, you are a peasant girl with a knife who made slaves of superhumans and has been riding on their backs for decades. You keep your findings hidden, you deny the benefits of your research to the world, and you don't take your own potions. Is it because you don't trust your own work, but you give it freely to thousands of others, charge them millions of dollars for a product you would not trust to take for free? Or is it because you know that you will someday crack the code and find the perfect formula, the ultimate formula, and you don't want to miss that chance?"

"Perhaps it is necessary that someone in this organization be untouched by the Entity's mind, thinking clearly, unlike the parahumans that are twisted into its image," she said coldly.

"Man that sounds like Director Piggot," he sighed.

"That is not at all what I mean," she retorted, scowling. "I meant only that there are other explanations that you had not considered."

"Such as an abiding disdain for parahumans of your own creation," he said. "We're coming back to all these reasons to never trust a skinny chef. Look, just a couple months ago I dealt with someone else that mass-produced brainwashed, mutilated parahumans. She was named Lamia, she was a Class-S threat that could have done unfathomed harm if I hadn't disintegrated her. And the only meaningful, substantive difference between her and you, is that she never attempted to corrupt any political organizations."

"Hyperbole," she said dismissively. "There are plenty of material differences between the Lamia creations and the products of Cauldron."

"We're back to arguing over details and subjective abstracts," he said, leaning back against the wall. "Okay, let me bring this back to familiar ground: are you getting what you want?"

"I want you to leave my organization in peace so we can save the world."

"Presume I do this. Was Cauldron actually saving the world before I got involved?" Danny asked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Just pause a moment, deep breath, clear your mind, and address one question: were you saving the world before I got involved? Or maybe, were you doing it in the best way?"

"We were doing an adequate job, before you began cutting our legs out from under us, yes," she said, glaring.

"So, you've identified his weakness?" Danny asked, poker-faced and guileless.

Doctor Mother froze. "What? What weakness? He has none at all, he has all the powers that he could want, all the invulnerability he desires, nearly-infinite durability. The forces he could survive would destroy our world several times over."

"So, that would be a no, then," Danny said, nodding. "I on the other hand do know how to kill Scion. And I-"

"Impossible," she declared, shaking her head. "I know you think the Simurgh can give you an edge. That is why you have recruited her cloned daughter. But it is not a weakness you can use to kill him. He has a minor difficulty with precognition, the Simurgh herself can trick him for a period of time, but no parahuman precognitive can even perceive Scion, so it's a weakness we can't exploit. And it only works well enough for him to dodge him or deflect him, never to attack him. He has some precognition of his own, but our simulations show it to be somewhat limited, but still greater than any single parahuman except Contessa."

"Contessa's not that great a precog," Danny pointed out. "She's a very, very narrow focus, and can see nothing outside of it."

"She can see everything that matters," Doctor Mother snapped.

Danny shrugged. "Only if you think that the only thing in the world that matters is defeating others. But that belief, taken literally and to the logical extreme, is evidence of highly disordered thinking."

She frowned at him. "You have been entirely flippant and facetious this entire conversation. You are hampering the most important work in the world. I have studied the entity for thirty years, his nature and his powers and his movements. There is no way that you can have deciphered an Achilles' heel that I do not know about. We have run simulations against power-nullifying Trumps, and there is a zero-percent chance. He is immune to the Manton effect, but also protected by it to a higher degree than most, even Manton-penetrating attacks are ineffective. The closest he has to a weakness is that the Simurgh can distract him for a while. Now, I know that your plan involves the Simurgh, but I assure you it will fail entirely."

"You're positive?" he asked.

"Absolutely," she said, biting the words off. Her tone made it clear that she was speaking the literal truth. She had absolute, all-encompassing belief that he would fail.

Danny cleared his throat. "Well, against a zealous, fervent faith like that, I know now that it is useless to try to speak reason to you. If you'll see me back out the way I came, I'll be on my way. I'll make sure you have a good close-up view when I do your job for you, without corrupting any world governments or abducting tens of thousands of innocents."

She paused, tapping her chin with one slender finger. "Out of the idlest of curiosity, how did you learn Scion's purported weakness?"

"I learned a lot about him from you and your people, and from news reports and other experts. But it really came down to my daughter."

She arched an eyebrow skeptically. "Your daughter?"

"Sure. Ever since I first started looking into capes and superheroics on my own, I have kept files in the basement of my old house. Pages, cards, dossiers, whiteboards, that sort of stuff. And every so often I have thousands of mice gather together, and review the information. When I do that, I can see all of the facts at once, I can put together a truly big picture all at once, where I am aware of all the information at the same time and can cross-apply every fact with every other fact. You've got too much information, you could spend a century just matching facts up next to each other to draw conclusions. But when Taylor reads your mind, she's reading your whole mind at once. Like every single book in a library. So, she can see patterns that would take you centuries to notice."

She shifted her stance, her heels clicking. "Bluffing. Your only plan is the same plan you always have: you intend to go face-to-face with the entity, and to expect it to listen to reason."

"About that door?" he said.

"Easy enough to keep you prisoner," she said.

"Sure," he said. "And it would take very little coercion to get me to tell you Scion's weakness. I've no stomach for pain, I've learned that. It would be exceedingly easy to have your people beat the answers out of me. Just admit that your methods have always been unnecessary, that your research was always pointless cruelty, that you have all this time been bringing evil into this world just to appease your own narcissistic ego, and then give the order that I am to be held prisoner until I tell you what you want to know. And give up the very last shred of pretense you've got left that you're not the real villain here."

She glared at him coldly, and made a small gesture with her fingers. A doorway opened in the air, leading back to the room that Danny had walked out from. He shrugged, and stepped through, pausing to look over his shoulder. "Doctor? Most people are not more willing to condemn a world to die than they are to admit that they were wrong." The doorway snapped shut behind him.

* * *

The conference room was well-lit and airy, with a window that faced onto the sea. The angled sunlight on the water looked like a sheet of satin and glitter. The room should have been dark and oppressive, with dry-ice fog filling the corners and swirling around the lighting fixtures. A handful of the Scavengers sat around the room. Danny and Taylor sat at opposite ends of the conference-room table, Oni Lee and Morrigan sat in lounge chairs in the corners. Pariah was sprawled in a hammock that hung in the air alongside one wall, Salvage was slumped down in one office chair so his face barely showed above the table, and a foot-tall Gulliver sat in the middle of the table, cross-legged as he fidgeted with a ball-point pen that looked like a spear in his hands. Uber and Leet were busy negotiating the sale of the factory, Panacea was on one of her hospital trips, and Gambler was home with her family.

"So, the odds have changed dramatically," Danny said, steepling his hands in front of his face. "When we first discovered the Eschaton, the odds were one-third, one-third, and one-third, for five and thirty and three hundred years. Now, they've gotten worse, and better, since we brought Morrigan onboard. I checked in with Gambler this morning; the odds that the world ends in the next week shot up from zero-point-oh-nine percent chance up to twenty percent. The odds of the world ending in the next five years after that dropped to about four percent. The odds of the world ending in three hundred years is at about twenty-eight percent. And the odds that the human race is still thriving after that is about forty-eight percent, with a forty-percent chance that humanity still exists a thousand years from now, and a twenty-five percent chance that humanity continues when the sun goes red giant and consumes the planet. Though, there was trouble getting some of those latter readings, it gets difficult to define what humanity is and is not under some conditions."

"So, we either screw it up in the next week, or we stay on the original plan of three centuries, or we're good forever," Pariah summed up.

"Which is a huge shift," Danny said, pulling out a chart. "Our five-year projection had been thirty percent, now it's twenty-four. Our thirty year projection projection had been sixty percent total including the five year, now it's about twenty-five. Our three-hundred year projection had been ninety-nine percent plus, now it's at fifty-two percent. There had been no measurable chance that the world was going to continue after the twenty-fourth century, but now there's an almost-even chance of that. In a lot of ways our odds look a lot better than they ever did before. But the scary thing is that twenty-percent next-week forecast. There's a statistically-significant chance that the world will end real damn soon, and it'll be our fault. Or my fault, really," Danny ducked his head.

"I think the difference between the world ending in five years and five days is insignificant next to the difference between humanity lasting for three centuries or three eons," Morrigan said dispassionately. "Five years is nothing, just enough time to really suffer adequately. If the goal is to secure humanity's success and prosperity, then you have to look at the long view, and by that measure this is definitely the correct track."

Taylor raised a hand. "Dad? No offense, but I'm inclined to disagree just because of the way she phrased that."

"I can't help being concerned by this idea that we might die really soon," Pariah said. "I'd rather have five years than not."

"I'm concerned about the part where it's our fault," Gulliver said, his eyes down as he spoke. "I can't have that on me."

Oni Lee sat up a bit straighter. "I think we'd have to be unreasonably stupid to turn away now. We're clearly on the right path, the numbers show it. We just need to do what we can to minimize that twenty percent. We need Dinah, we need thinkers, we need to shift those numbers as much as we can, but we need to push forward."

"That's a pretty strong opinion," Taylor said, craning her head around. "I'm not used to strong opinions from you."

The Asian man shrugged. "Maybe I'm biased in this matter. After all, my only powers, skills, and experience have all been with fighting. And I like fighting for the right cause, it's far better than fighting for Lung and the Azn Bad Boys. But if we just stand down and wait five years, or thirty years, to die... I've got nothing. Everything I have rides on us fighting, and winning. So, like I said, maybe that influences my decision."

"I think that all of you need to take a statistics class," Pariah said. "Look at these numbers: this is two different scenarios mashed in together. We need to pick them apart. Look, there's a twenty percent chance that we try the plan and fail, and doom everyone this week. There's a four percent chance that we don't try, and the world ends in five years. There's a twenty-eight percent chance that we don't do anything, and the world ends in three hundred years. And there's a forty-eight percent chance that we try, and succeed, and we're good forever. Line those numbers up against each other: if we try, there's a twenty percent chance to fail and a forty-eight percent chance to succeed. If we don't, there's four percent and twenty-eight percent. So, there's a sixty-eight percent chance that we try, and a thirty-two percent chance we don't try. If we don't try, the odds are, uh, one in eight that the world ends in five years, and so on. But if we do try, there is about a five-in-seven chance that we save the world forever."

Taylor squinted at the numbers. "Okay, that's a bit more persuasive. But I come back to what Oni Lee had to say, about minimizing the odds and trying to shift them in our favor a bit."

Gulliver snorted and scoffed. "Really? Trying to hedge the odds? What happened to your spirit of adventure? Defy the odds! Charge the breach! Nobody ever wrote an exciting tale of the people that sat around and talked about probabilities and did the safe thing! Heroics is about do-or-die, and damn the consequences!"

"Are you feeling okay?" Danny asked.

"I'm just filling in for Leet and Uber," Gulliver admitted, slumping a bit. "They're the funny ones, and it feels like someone should be trying to make jokes out of this."

Salvage snorted. "You should leave it to the pros, buddy."

"I miss Mouse Protector," Taylor said, her hand going to her waist to tap the hilt of the sword she carried. "But if any of you ever repeats that, I'll deny it."

"Are _you_ feeling okay?" Danny asked, swiveling his gaze to his daughter.

"Copacetic," she said with a strained grin.

Oni Lee slouched back down in his lounger. "We're already committed. We put in a ton of time, effort, we took chances, we've unbalanced power structures just to get where we are. We've sacrificed a hell of a lot just to get this five-in-seven chance of success. Lives, resources, our consciences... if we turn back now, we sacrificed all of that just to get to the precipice and walk away. Now, I'm not fond of doubling down on a bad bet, but five in seven is damn good Vegas odds. And if we don't take those odds, the world ends soon enough anyway, with or without us."

Salvage scooted up in his chair. "Fuck it, let's go for it."

"I'm sold," Taylor said. "But I still wish we weren't relying on _her_ ," she said with a glare towards Morrigan.

"I'd rather you all had thought of a plan that didn't involve me," Morrigan agreed.

Salvage laughed quietly at that.

Gulliver looked around the room, and back at Danny. "I guess I'm the last to vote. I'm in. It's unanimous."

Danny sighed in relief. "I was really hoping you'd all say that, but I thought you all deserved to know what Gambler said to me. Now then, let's talk about the last Endbringer."

"Let's talk about the irony that we're using something called an Endbringer to save the world from the golden god, the greatest hero on Earth," Taylor chuckled.

"Irony later, plans now," Pariah said, sitting upright in her hammock.

* * *

The Simurgh hung in the upper atmosphere, at the point where it was hard to say whether one was in space or the sky, on the border between hovering and orbiting. Her wings were folded about her, some large that wrapped her like a cocoon, other smaller ones that added little flourishes to her appearance. One small slender wing was laid over her eyes like a sleep-mask. Her hair waved around her face and shoulders, blowing in a wind that only she could feel. This high, the air was too thin to generate a decent breeze, but her hair responded anyway.

And then the wing across her face lifted away, tucking itself among the rest of her white-feathered limbs, and her eyes opened. Two black orbs in a beautiful, all-too-human face, they stared blindly at the world as she turned her head to face downwards at an angle. Her silent song echoed all about her, a warbling psychic trill that needed no air to carry it. And it described a radius in which her mental powers were effective. And at the border of that radius was a new song, quieter and stifled, like half the notes were missing off the sheet music. But, it was close enough for the alien being to recognize what it was.

And at the edge of the Morrigan's range, in the opposite direction, was a helicopter. The chopper hovered above the North Atlantic, piloted by remote control, with only one passenger on board. Oni Lee sat in the cabin chair with the big can-style earmuffs fitted over his ears and a bone-induction mike taped to his jaw. He sat back with his eyes closed, listening carefully in more ways than one. The chopper hovered above the water, swaying slightly, and the man inside felt the brush of telepathic contact with Morrigan, and listened to his team leader over the headphones.

And then Danny, on the ground back at the city, carefully operated the controls for the chopper as he carefully chose his words through the comm unit plugged into his ear. "Wharf Rat to Oni Lee, it looks like everything is in position right now."

"Roger, Wharf Rat. We're arranged and online, go ahead and transmit on your signal."

The Wharf Rat took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. It was a momentous occasion, the first time that a human or parahuman had managed to successfully communicate with an Endbringer. It had been tried before, when the Simurgh first appeared, and that had ended... badly. "This message is for the individual or intelligence known as the Simurgh. Please confirm that you receive and understand this message."

Oni Lee heard the words and placed them at the front of his consciousness, framing them clearly in his mind's eye. Morrigan hovered in the air, and plucked Oni Lee's message out of his mind and then translated it into something that the Simurgh could perceive and recognize. The Endbringer unfurled its wings, a vast corona of feathers that opened almost like an umbrella to reveal the humanoid torso in the center. The woman's shape was slender and shapely, though the details were largely lost in the white-on-white color scheme. The reaction seemed to be the closest that it could manage to a gesture or facial expression.

Morrigan received its reaction and deciphered it into thoughts modeled on a human mind and projected them back down to Oni Lee. The man murmured for the bone-induction mike to hear his words and relay them to Wharf Rat. "She hears you. She is.. surprised or something, at the idea that we could or would communicate to her as equals. She is used to taking what she wants to know and, um, forcing what she wants people to think."

"Thanks Oni Lee. Okay, does she seem offended at all?"

"I don't think the Simurgh would know how to be offended," Oni Lee said, trying to wrap his mind around the concepts that were in his mind. Morrigan's mind was almost alien, abstract ideas that he could not fathom swam like heaving whales under the surface of her mind, and he could almost glimpse the shape of the Simurgh's thoughts as if through a distorted mirror, and it was not only alien it was almost mechanistic, more like a checklist of stimuli and responses with conditional modifiers and if-then trees.

"Good. Ahem, to the Simurgh: Are you amenable to communicating with us at this time?"

There was a pause as the message was relayed, then Oni Lee said, "She is."

"Thank you. First I have a question:" he said, and steadied his breath. "Are you getting what you want?"

The silence ticked by in seconds. "She asks you to clarify what you mean by 'want'," Oni Lee said.

"She is familiar with the concept of goals, because she has exhibited a capacity for long-term planning," Danny said. "Ask her to consider that concept, and then compare the current state of her existence and the world to the state that the world would be in after she has accomplished her goals. Then ask her if her current actions and reactions, in the context of current events and status quo, will bring her to the goals that she aspires to."

The pause was longer. "She says no."

"Anything with that?"

"Just.. I don't know, sadness? Regret?"

"Resignation?" Danny prompted.

"Yeah, like that," Oni Lee said. "But not much of it."

"Ask her if it is an internal matter that keeps her from achieving her goals, or an external obstacle, or both," Danny spoke into the microphone.

"I'm asking... " Oni Lee replied. "Her response is basically: why do you want to know?"

"Tell her that depending on the outcome, we may be able to help her accomplish her goals to a degree."

"Okay, this reply had bullet points, or something. Bear with me. She believes that her methods are too confined, her opportunities have been squandered, her limitations are too great, her timeline has been interrupted, she has no assistance from her counterparts, her energy source has been rescinded, and she fully believes that she will be destroyed the next time she activates, in about a year and a half."

"Is she capable of overcoming any of those obstacles?"

"Um... not by herself. I think she's starting to get excited, she's starting to see the potential for us to help her. Boss, just gotta remind you, this is a genocidal monster that wants all humanity dead."

"Understood, thank you," Danny said. "All right, ask her if she has any goals that are compatible with our own preferred outcomes, either individually or in combination?"

"Okay, I asked... it's taking a bit to answer, she either doesn't understand the question or she's taking her time thinking about it..." his voice trailed off, then came back again. "All right, she starts by stating that her primary goal is to kill/injure/terrorize humanity on as large a scale as possible. She wants to know how much of humanity she could be allowed to kill, injure or terrorize, and the vibe I'm getting through Morrigan is sort of 'it can't hurt to ask', sort of."

"Tell her that the answer to that is zero, and will always be zero. There is no room for negotiation on that point. Does she have other goals that we may consider? Her current position is that she will not be able to accomplish any of her goals at all, so if we can assist with even some of the minor goals, she is better off with us than without us."

"Morrigan says that's too complicated for this interface, but she'll try to break it down into smaller parts," Oni Lee said. "Boss, from what I'm getting, the Simurgh is more of a computer than a parahuman. It's like everything in her head is just lists of information connected to other information. Like her prime directive is to kill, her secondary directive is to turn others into killers, tertiary directive is to injure people, et cetera."

"I'm not as surprised by that as I should be," Danny considered. "Each of them is intelligent and problem-solving, but they are also completely unique and have never been known to communicate at all. So there is obviously some sort of thought process but it would have been designed and implanted rather than developed organically."

"Yeah," Oni Lee agreed. "Okay, she's got four options for us that she thinks we would not be entirely averse to. First, she wants us to help her break her programming that forces her to attack humanity. She knows that if she attacks us again, we will kill her, and one of her lesser goals is self-preservation. She would rather fight and win, but she'd rather not fight than to fight and lose and die. Second option: she wants us to grant her enough energy to either fight and win, or to survive the loss. Apparently she and her brothers have been losing energy for several months now, since immediately before Leviathan died, but I don't understand that entirely. The third option: she wants us to help her kill Scion and, uh, Eidolon. Apparently that's just a straight-up revenge thing, but it's got lots of connotations and inferences I'm not getting. And the fourth proposal: she wants to be allowed to attend to scenes of human suffering even if she does not cause them. If she can't cause it, she wants permission to at least witness it."

"Gross," Danny said. His pen scratched on a notepad, detailing the options. _1: deprogram hostility for self-preservation. 2: give energy? 3: kill scion and eid. 4: omen of doom?_ He looked them over. "Okay, tell her we would willingly assist with the first, we need clarification of the second, the third is negotiable but complicated, and the fourth is unexpected but we could hear more about that."

"Sent that. And now Morrigan is trying to restrain a massive info-dump in my brain," Oni Lee grimaced. "Okay, in short: her power source has always been finite, and depleting, but recently the energy from it has been actively diverted to something else, and closed off from her, she's running on fumes. She wants us to help explain what we need to help her kill Eidolon and Scion. And if she is going to be witnessing human tragedies, she will need help with both the deprogramming and the energy. She is arranging these in levels of priority, like she's creating new subroutines. She's worked out some sort of internal unit of measure for how much we have to give her depending on the degree of her help."

"Weird. All right, Oni Lee, explain to her that we want her to communicate directly with Scion, much as we have communicated with her."

"She wants to know why."

"Tell her I intend to ask Scion whether he is getting what he wants."

The seconds stretched out. "She is.. I don't know, she wants confirmation to clarify. She wants to make sure that you mean to negotiate a truce with Scion, and with herself?"

"Exactly. We will help her live peacefully, if she will help us help Scion to live peacefully."

"She wants confirmation again."

"Try a different explanation. Tell her that our first priority is to cooperate to mutual benefit, our second priority is to cohabitate in mutual non-interference, our third priority is to destroy our enemies, and our fourth preference is to fight and lose. With those priorities, we can cooperate with both the Simurgh and with Scion."

"Okay, I think she gets it this time. So, she can use her powers to speak to Scion, and to Morrigan, and down the relay chain like we're doing now. And in so doing, she could help us to converse with Scion and achieve the cooperation and mutual benefit."

"Just so, that's right," Danny said. "And that if that is impossible, we have our third priority, we can destroy Scion and the Simurgh to no mutual long-term benefit but no long-term loss, either."

Oni Lee frowned, then grinned. "I think she understands that we are warning her not to fuck with us. But, she wants to point out that cutting off the discussion at the third level is to assign a zero-percent chance to fourth-priority, that we could fight and lose."

"Tell her that Scion has an easily-overlooked but easily-exploited fatal weakness that we can use to kill him with a minimum of trouble, risk and sacrifice. And that Eidolon can de-nature her core and get rid of her in a second, because we've been getting steadily more efficient at killing Endbringers."

"She seems to understand that easily enough. Funny, she has trouble understanding the idea of 'want', but she understands death threats on the first try."

"How she's programmed,. I guess," Danny said. "Ask her how much of her demands we have to fulfill to get her assistance with this."

Oni Lee pinched the bridge of his nose to stave off a headache. "This is getting complex. She's trying to phrase this discussion in terms of descending priorities again. Okay, to make the attempt she requires us to help her reprogram so she doesn't have to keep fighting us. If she succeeds in convincing Scion, she will need a new energy source or a top-up to sustain her for a while. If negotiations with Scion break down, she wants to help us killing him. And if your plan to kill Scion fails, she wants guarantees that she will be allowed to travel freely to witness the destruction of humanity."

"Jesus," Danny said, making a face at the pad of paper he was keeping notes on. "This bitch is just icky. Okay, counteroffer: we will assist in her deprogramming as soon as we have instructions and assistance with that task. And we will find her new energy sources if she is able to successfully negotiate Scion's cooperation, or a temporary measure if she manages to negotiate Scion's promise of non-hostilities. If she cannot achieve either his assistance or neutrality, then the Simurgh dies before Scion so she will not get to confirm the death of her enemy. And if she manages to get his cooperation, she will get to travel freely provided she does no harm."

"More complicated, not less," Oni Lee complained. "But... she seems to get it just fine. She notices the way that you stack consequence to condition to create incentives for her to succeed, and penalties should she sabotage this action."

"I wasn't particularly subtle," Danny chuckled. "I wanted to make sure that the terms were clear and the communication unambiguous."

"I'm telling her," Oni Lee said. "And... and I think we have a deal. Boss, I think you just recruited _the Simurgh_ to your mission. What the actual entire hell."

"I'm going to flip out as soon as we're done here," Danny said. "But first, we need to know what will be required for us to break her programming."


	23. Chapter 23

"I am so sure that all of this is a trap," Taylor grimaced, pacing back and forth. "C'mon, it's an Endbringer, and the only one that's ever been known to use deception, red herrings, and long-term traps. Her entire reason for being is to kill as many of us as possible. Whatever she's going to ask you to do, it's going to involve somehow building a bomb or giving her even more power or something."

Theo Anders sat on the edge of the table, this time full-sized. He was no longer wearing Scavenger black, he had traded that uniform in for a suit of generic-looking power armor made from generic parts that were produced by Dragon's new production facility. His armor was grayish-tan, and bulky on his sturdily-built frame. In the past several weeks he'd been losing fat, keeping up the intensive workouts that his aunt had put him through before he triggered, but he was still big-boned with a barrel chest and a thick core. His helmet sat on the table beside him. "I thought your dad said they already checked for that sort of thing, talked to Dinah."

"Dinah is weirdly unreliable around Endbringers," Taylor volleyed back. "And even still, I'd rather trust that an Endbringer is sneaky and genocidal than trust that Dinah's powers are accurate. They're a known quantity, they've never shown anything but an urge to murder and terrify."

"And literally nobody has ever spoken to them," Oni Lee pointed out. He put his feet up on the table. "Lots of things can change when you start talking to people."

Taylor pulled a face. "Nevertheless, it's the only outcome that makes sense. You said yourself, she puts a higher value on destroying humans than she puts on saving her own life. She only has a self-preservation instinct or a Third Law of Robotics so that she can survive longer and have a higher long-term body count. If she knows that she is going to die soon, her only consideration is to kill as many of us as possible. If her choices are between surviving without killing, or killing without surviving, she'll try to kill us. That's how she's wired."

"She asked to be reprogrammed and to be released from her compulsion to kill," Theo said. "That's in really tricky ground, Three Laws-wise. The fact that she could even fathom that shows that she has a fair amount of creativity and a capacity to imagine more. She wants to be more than she is, she wants to expand and evolve."

"No, she wants you to think that, so she can kill us," Taylor retorted. She reached the end of the room and turned, striding the other direction. "Heck, I'm not even comfortable with what is going on with Pariah right now. This is really, really heavy, and she should not be doing this by herself, and this is only the smallest issue we've got in front of us right now."

"She's got Eidolon with her," Theo pointed out.

She threw her hands up. "I'm still not sure I should trust _him_! We know the Protectorate is going to turn on us, and soon. And I am not just slightly freaked out by that, either. The Protectorate has been building up its power for months, creating thousands of new suits of power armor, training its people up more intensively than ever before. Dragon has been creating more vehicles and transports, to load more Protectorate heroes into a location than ever before. I honestly wish we'd had this sort of layout when we were fighting Leviathan. Instead, this is the sort of force that turns a blind eye when we get hit with two Class S catastrophes at the same time. God, sometimes it seems like these so-called heroes only exist to make my life harder. Like they can't help doing everything wrong at every turn. And now they're armed up all to hell and back, and we're going to be wedged between those assholes and an Endbringer with a hydrogen bomb."

Oni Lee chuckled. "Paranoid much?"

"What part of it is wrong?" Taylor demanded, rounding on him.

"The part where Cauldron isn't in charge of the Protectorate or the PRT anymore," the man who was Butcher XV reminded her. "Look, every teenager thinks the world is out to get them. It's normal and it's natural. You're trapped in between the part of your life when you get no responsibilities and the part of your life when you get autonomy, and right now you're just hit with responsibilities and no authority. It sucks, but it passes. The first thing is just to recognize that this is not what the world really is, it's just what being a teenager is. Draw that distinction, understand that difference, and you'll find it a lot easier to hold a better outlook."

"That's pretty wordy for a fortune cookie," Theo said blandly.

"Racist," Oni Lee grinned at him.

"Seriously!" Taylor blurted.

"He knew I didn't mean it like that," Theo said.

"I did," Oni Lee acknowledged.

"Still!" Taylor said, still flustered.

"I think Uber and Leet and Salvage are bad influences on us," Oni Lee said. "It's a dryer humor, but it still works for us."

Oni Lee dropped a hand onto Taylor's shoulder. "What's going on with you? This isn't really you."

The girl sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Sorry, I just get tense before big fights. Bigger fight, more tension. Normally it's easier because Dad's around. But this... this is like the biggest fight there could be. And whatever Dinah says, I'm not sure about the outcome here."

Danny walked in from the side office, running his hands over his short-cropped hair in an extremely similar gesture to his daughter's. "Well, I've got Citrine on board now. She's looking for work now that Accord's dead, and she's having a hard time making her way as a mercenary. Most people that would want to hire her, she doesn't want to work for. And the rest want to recruit her rather than hire her, and she hates that even more."

"And she actually agreed?" Taylor blurted. "Does she know that we're the ones that killed Accord?"

"Apparently she gave us a discount because of that," Danny chuckled. He walked to the whiteboard and crossed off Citrine's name. Flechette, Eidolon, Floret and Usher were already crossed off as well. "Okay, now just Epoch and Shamrock. She should be easy, she's hanging with Faultline's crew these days and they still owe me a favor. But Epoch is not just a villain who doesn't want to work with heroes, he's also a leader of a large organization so he's got a ton of pride and self-image to argue against. And he considers himself a chessmaster type, so he's likely to try to game us or make a move for himself right when it's least convenient."

"I'll sort him," Taylor said. "I just need to read him and find out when he's going to act up, and we can deal with him then." She seemed more confident already.

"I'd appreciate it," Danny said, smiling. "Now I just need to figure out how to make him say yes, when he would gladly say no just for the sake of spite."

"You've already figured it out," Taylor said as she flopped into a chair.

He quirked an eyebrow. "Did you finally decide to read my mind?"

"And see what you're imagining about Sophia Loren? No thanks. I just know your tells, dad. And, I've gotten better at reading people in general. When you know what thoughts go with what expression, you start figuring out the patterns. So, how are you going to get Epoch?"

"By appealing to his ego of course," Danny said. "C'mon, we're the team that tood down the Empire in a day, took out the Elite in a day, we bring down criminal empires just because we happened to be in the neighborhood, and take on Class-S threats two at a time, and we're coming to him for help. Not even his Adepts, either, but himself. He'll get such a swelled head that he'll never wear the same hat again."

"Sounds solid," Theo nodded.

Taylor was looking at the whiteboard again. "Y'know, I'm looking over this list. You've got two people that totally change physics, two more that only kinda change physics. A minor thinker, the most powerful parahuman in the world... but the one that concerns me the most is Usher. You've got someone whose only claim to fame is that he can give other people power immunity and invulnerability. What the hell does that really say? That she only really needs one of you guys alive at the end?"

"Usher's there to make sure that the Simurgh survives the reprogramming," Danny explained. "She was really not designed for aftermarket alterations, especially not deleting her primary objective and all its variations."

Taylor considered that. "If it's true, that makes me feel a lot better. So, I know that Sabah's off with Eidolon doing that Flechette thing that Theo insists isn't actually necromancy. And the rest of us are here. But where the hell is Morrigan?"

"I set her up in a cabin up on Captain's Peak about five miles from anyone at all," Danny said. "It was just best for everyone if she was away from people in general, and this team specifically. In particular, to be away from you, Taylor."

"I'll say," she muttered.

"She said that you really freak her out," Danny finished.

She looked up at him, then across at Oni Lee and Theo. "That's one of you guys' jokes, right? You're messing with me?"

Danny looked over at Oni Lee. "You guys've been telling jokes?"

"We're getting into it," Oni Lee said. "We're finding a chemistry to it."

"The chemistry is mostly dry and sardonic," Theo added.

"You're not kidding?" Taylor asked. " _She_ was freaked out by _me_?"

"You're a human mind reader," Danny pointed out. "Everyone thought that was even more impossible than hybrid Endbringers."

"Unbelievable," she muttered. Danny got up to go call some contacts that would have a phone number for Epoch of the Adepts.

* * *

It was dark out by the time that Sabah came back through the doors into the wing of the factory set aside for Scavenger work. She was bleary-eyed with exhaustion, yawning continuously, but her step had a grace to it that had never been there before. Theo leaned his head out of his door, and blinked at her appearance. "Whoa, Sabah, are you okay?" he asked, sympathetic concern immediately flooding over his face. He was wearing flannel pajama bottoms but his usual modesty and self-consciousness was forgotten in a second as he stepped out to check on his teammate.

"Yeah, fine," the short fashion student said, leaning up against the wall. "It took Eidolon hours, literally hours, to find the right power to use, and I just sat by and waited for him to get it right. I really kinda wish that he could have done that stuff on his time, and just let me know whe it was ready so I could do something besides sit in the grass in a cemetery thinking about the sixteen-year-old girl I'd fallen in love with before I broke her heart and try not to feel stupid sitting around with Eidolon standing there talking to himself. He's kind of a tool sometimes, but he has these moments where he actually gets so awkward it's almost charming. I think they call that adorkable. He's almost that, but never quite gets there."

"And you feel fine? I mean, you're not..."

"Despondent? Depressed? Traumatized? Angsty?" she said. "I don't know, maybe a little. Some of her personality got merged with mine, so I have to figure out how to deal with that. She's a little more feisty than I am, so I need to watch myself that I don't start snapping at people. And I've got most of her memories, along with her power."

Danny leaned out of his room, then rushed out to see her. He was still in his Scavenger black garb, it was rumpled like he had fallen asleep in it. "Damn, I'm glad you're okay!" he exclaimed, stepping up to give the girl a hug. "If I'd known it would take Eidolon that long, I would have made sure had a packed lunch."

"There was a food cart, we were okay," Sabah said. Her accent was slightly changed now, bits of Flechette blended into Pariah. "Mostly it was boring. There was lots of waiting. Apparently we were trying to do something way too specific. Ask the guy for ways to turn stone to water and he's got a hundred answers, but necromancy is-"

"It's not necromancy," Theo said sternly.

"And why not?"

"Because we're heroes, and necromancy has been outlawed in this state since the early 1800s," Theo replied.

"Got it," Sabah said, nodding.

Salvage was wearing a t-shirt and boxers when he opened the door. "Ah, you're back. How'd it go?"

"Not bad," Pariah said, gesturing. Threads bearing needles snaked out of her sleeve, weaving in the air. "These needles can now penetrate any material at all. If I need to take down the Simurgh, I've got this under control all by myself. No Alexandria, Clockblocker, just me. So, that's a cool feeling."

The little man snorted. "Shit. I'll bet."

Taylor poked her head out the door. "Oh, you're back! Thank goodness, I thought we were just having impromptu team meetings in the hallway at midnight just for the hell of it."

Sabah laughed a little at that. "So, Taylor, just to soothe my worries, could you take a peek at me and make sure my brain's not broken?"

Taylor rolled her eyes and shut the door, then emerged a minute later with a bathrobe on over her nightshirt. "Okay, this'll only take a second... ah hah. Well, I can see why you'd be worried, this isn't how I would have merged two personalities, but the two of you seem to be melding peacefully, two confident young women who got along well, with nobody insecure enough to try to seize the whole identity. "

"Well, that's good at least," Theo said, grinning.

Oni Lee poked his head out the door and looked around. He spent a few seconds sizing up the situation. "It's late. Go to bed," he said, and closed the door.

There was a moment of silence, and then Theo cleared his throat. "Well, I guess simple probabilities would dictate that at least one of us sleeps naked, right? Good night, I need to wash my eyes and brain now."

"Good night," Danny said, turning back to his room.

"Didn't need that," Salvage grumbled.

"I'm underage," Taylor griped as she walked away. "Isn't that illegal?"

"So much a lesbian," Sabah muttered, opening her room. "Good night everyone."

* * *

Tattletale was out of costume but was still clearly recognizable when she pushed the door open and let herself into the break room. "Rat, have you _seriously_ been telling people that you know how to kill _Scion_?" she demanded.

"If by 'people' we mean 'literally nobody except the leader of Cauldron', then yeah. But she was already planning on killing Scion, just she was going to do it the hard way."

"God!" the teenager burst out, throwing her arms up in the air. "I leave you alone for like, four months, and you just fall right the hell apart! What the hell, man, this is about as dumb a thing as you can do!"

Danny spun the bag of bread closed and cinched the twist-tie onto it. "If anyone's heard about this, at all, it's because Doctor Mother is launching a pre-emptive strike to discredit me before I have a chance to take her spotlight away from her. She's probably trying to convince the Protectorate to come after me all at once and kill me."

"I'm glad you figured that out without thinker powers!" Tattletale exclaimed. "Seriously, what were you doing?"

He shook his head as he put the jars back in the refrigerator. "Look, if she didn't have something like that on me, she would have made something up. This isn't about what I said, this is about how much the Doctor wants people to hate me."

"Well she's certainly starting in the right place! If you threaten Scion, you threaten the man that saved hundreds of millions of people from the Endbringers!" she dropped heavily into a chair and glared at him.

Danny chewed his sandwich for a minute before he spoke. "And it doesn't matter to people that he is going to destroy all human life, sooner or later?"

"They're more worried about the sooner or later, when you seem to be all about the sooner," she said. "Rumors shoot right through cape communities, we've got a rumor mill like you wouldn't believe. And right now literally everyone knows that you've been collaborating with the Simurgh and plotting to kill Scion. Mister Rat, you're gonna get killed, like today! If I were you I'd find a news camera with a live broadcast and surrender yourself immediately, tell them you've realized the error of your ways and you've given up your plan, you're ready to make amends, and maybe you'll get life in the Birdcage instead of a shallow grave in Potter's Field!"

"Hmm," he said, considering. "This really does sound pretty tough. Your powers are backing you on this?"

"My power is telling me that you are radioactive as hell!" she said, slapping the tabletop. "It's screaming at me to get away from you before I'm collateral damage! Mister Rat, there are forces mobilizing. Right now the worst dudes in the world are literally writing your name on their bullets!"

Danny looked over his sandwich. "I should do something about that," he said.

"Fuck! Yes! Save yourself!" Tattletale insisted, surging to her feet.

The man cleared his throat, and looked up into the middle distance. "Wharf Rat to Doctor Mother," he said.

The doorway opened immediately, and the woman stood in place with her arms crossed. "It should not have come to this," she said sternly. "You have no idea what measures I would take to save my operation and the world."

"Did you know that Taylor's a pretty decent artist?" Danny said. "Especially portraits, she got good at them after her mother passed. She sketched her mother over and over to make sure she would never forget her face. It's amazingly sweet. So when she read your mind last time, she got a good look at your memories, at the one face you were guaranteed to never forget. The thing you killed, Scion's counterpart, his wife-slash-sister-slash-daughter-slash-mother-slash-whatever. Long black hair, striking and strong features. You saw the thing's face that was going to be Scion's partner before you killed her, Doctor. So I wonder, Doctor, why it is that you never recognized that face when you saw it again?"

The scientist stared at him blankly. "Whatever are you talking about?"

"The human face of the female Scion-thing. The human face that was created by one of its power-shards. You looked at it for years and never connected them. But Taylor's a good artist, and we both saw the connection," he said, and gestured towards the refrigerator. Hung upon it with kitchen magnets was a piece of paper, a sketched portrait with bold colors, depicting a woman with long, straight black hair, wide eyes and a strong mouth. The woman in the portrait was looking up from a mass of flesh and membranes that depicted an utter horror of sickening proportions. It was the entity's wife, the female version of Scion, that had been killed in the Doctor's home dimension. And it had stared at her with Alexandria's face.

Doctor Mother stared at the drawing. "That... that should not be possible."

"And yet here we are," Danny said, taking another bite of his sandwich while the woman from Cauldron stared at the drawing and saw the resemblence. "So," he said when his mouth was clear, "you harvested powers from the dead alien on your homeworld. You started with the big ones, the important ones. You stole the shard that lets them travel at light speed and gave it to Legend, you took the shard that lets them activate different shards and gave it to Eidolon. You took the shard that makes sure they never make a mistake, and gave it to Contessa. The shard for infinite invulnerability, to the man who created the Siberian. And the shard that was going to create the entity's likeness for humanity, you gave to the girl who grew up to be Alexandria. Strength, invulnerability, flight, high-end conventional intelligence, even super senses and enhanced speed. It's a great powerset, and so easy to build on. A great default setting for anyone who can take any other powers they want at any other time. And doesn't it seem just a bit familiar?"

"You think that Scion's base powers are the same as Alexandria's," the scientist said.

"Oh, shit," Tattletale murmured. "Wait, I've been doing my own research. And I know that Scion was meant to be stronger than his counterpart. He's the brawn, she's the brains."

"True, but that's about matters of degree," Wharf Rat said. "Look, they activated a power that would create for them a compatible form to interact with our species and our planet, with powers to make them superior to us. The one that the Doctor killed was not done activating her powers to create the form. But Alexandria has finished, and so has Scion. So, while he has a ton of other powers to choose from, he's got a few favorites, and only one that's activated constantly by default. But more to the point-"

"Alexandria's weaknesses are Scion's weaknesses," Tattletale finished, her brain working quickly. "Okay, so any flaws in Alexandria's powers would be present in Scion's. But Alexandria has only been seriously in danger twice: once when she was fighting the Siberian-"

"-which does not count for reasons I'll explain in a minute," Danny interrupted.

"-and when she was nearly... drowned," Tattletale said, her voice winding down.

Danny nodded. "The shard that created the Scion form, the locus through which all of his other powers are channeled, was made to survive in our environment. Specific pressure, gravity, oxygen content. It's pretty durable, but when it chose this form it did not seem to realize how easily a human or parahuman can asphyxiate. Look at all of Scion's movements from his first appearance to present day, and you'll see him flying all about within a couple thousand feet of the surface. He does not dive, or bury himself, or fly too high. Not once in thirty years. He does literally everything else a parahuman could be expected to do. He moves mountains, slays monsters, walks through fire, shrugs off major explosions. But he does not go anywhere that there is not an oxygen-rich air environment. The three Endbringers hide in three places: the upper atmosphere, the deep ocean, and under the earth. Places that Scion can reach easily, but he never pursues them once they leave environments that humans can survive. Patterns like that are important."

"And he has been struck by the Siberian before, but it only injured him for a second before he recovered," Tattletale said. "Even if you hit him with something that can hurt Alexandria, he still regenerates it nearly instantly. But regeneration doesn't stop someone from drowning..."

Doctor Mother's jaw was half-hanging, staring from one to the other, occasionally looking back at the portrait drawn from her own memories. "You mean to tell me that you think that Scion, the most powerful hero in the world, the unstoppable juggernaut that is fated to destroy the world, the interdimensional monster hidden behind a human face.. can be drowned like a toddler in a wading pool?" Her voice started out awed but shifted to skeptical and then mocking. "Do you even hear yourselves?"

"Then tell me why I'm wrong," Danny said, staring at her with frankly contemptuous eyes. "And not just because you don't believe I'm right, but a reason."

"It can't be true, it's too..." she sputtered to a stop. "It strains all credulity, and there's no proof at all."

"Say, Doctor?" Danny said with disarming nonchalance. "When did you get your degree?"

"Pardon?" she was taken aback.

"I mean, you were pretty busy after you killed the wounded alien, harvesting powers and building your facility, and recruiting your private army and building your power base in our world and kidnapping people. I'm just wondering if you put all of that on hold so you could dummy up a fake identity, go through modern schooling as a citizen, then eight years of higher education, writing your thesis, submitting for peer review, and getting certified. Doctor." He held her gaze, unblinking. "I mean, your native world was stuck in the late Bronze Age, and you were an uneducated villager there. So, what is your degree in? Multidimensional mathematics? High-energy physics? Xenobiology? Genetic engineering? Medical practice? Liberal arts? Honorary degree? Or are you self-titled as a doctor without any specialized training, so that you could get the respect and the reverence of an accomplished expert, when everything you know about this comes from abducting people and running them through trial-and-error tests to see what happens? Your image is predicated on unquestionable credentials and nigh-superhuman intellect, but I think that you are actually wildly unqualified for your position, and you are in way over your head. So you discard any idea that wasn't your own, just so that you can rest secure in your perception as a peerless expert."

Her face was frozen and her voice was just as cold. "You have never shown me an ounce of respect, Mister Hebert. You have jabbed at me, insulted me, and antagonized me from the very beginning, taunting me to have you killed. And yet you offer endless patience and forgiveness to common street criminals. Thugs and brutal murderers, you take in as friends, coddled and swaddled. But for myself, a professional who has accomplished so much, you have such a bottomless well of disdain and contempt."

"Of course," Danny said, looking at her with something like disbelief that she was bothering to ask. "If someone does terrible things because of hardship, you offer them security and companionship to make them stop doing those things. If someone does terrible things because nobody has ever tried to stop them, you challenge them over and over until they stop doing those things. Circus and Trainwreck, Grue and Tattletale, they committed crimes because they felt they had no choice. I gave them a choice. You've always had a choice, but nobody ever bothered to tell you that you were wrong. So, now I am here to tell you that you are wrong."

"In your opinion," she snapped.

"In a dozen ways that I've already proven to you," he sighed, rolling his eyes. "Your methods. Your goals. The giant piles of dead bodies. The corruption. The tattoos. The way you manipulate people. The skinny-chef issue. The fact that you have been proven to be evil over and over again and you just literally ignore all the evidence. But now, I've shown you how to kill Scion. You need a half-decent hydrokinetic or telekinetic, and some way to baffle his precognition or keep him from realizing that he should activate it. And that's it. And right now, you've got an army of good men and women you have deceived into attacking me. They are arming up and gearing up and preparing themselves to bring the vengeance of a righteous god down on my head. They are doing this because of you. Your excuse for this underhanded insanity was that you thought I was bluffing about knowing how to kill Scion. Your excuse, was that I was dangerous because I was going after Scion without any way to contain the damage if something went wrong. And now you have no excuse. I have a Plan A through Plan F how to convince Scion to help humanity from now until the end of time. I have a Plan G through Plan M how to kill him if that fails. So, you have no excuse for rousing the Protectorate against me. No excuse, no rationalization. Now, _if I can convince you to be a little less evil than absolutely necessary for just five fucking minutes would you please be so decent as to tell someone the truth for the first fucking time and get your corrupted heroes to stand down_."

"There's still no proof that your plan will work, that he really has a weakness," Doctor Mother retorted, but she sounded bitter and resentful now.

"Lady, your best plan was to muster up a giant army of parahumans to attack him with lasers and explosions and fists," Danny pointed out. "You were going to try _the only thing you know for sure wouldn't work_ , but your plan was to _try it really hard_. Do you understand that your Plan A under ideal conditions is less likely to succeed than any of my last-ditch backup plans? He is invulnerable to all conventional damage, he regenerates from attacks like the Siberian that have what amounts to infinite strength. But you think that if we just punch him _enough_ , then suddenly we'll win? And you think that's a better plan than the only weakness we've ever found on him, by examining thirty years of his movements?" He shook his head. "Just stand down. You're going to get everyone killed."

The doorway disappeared, and Danny took a bite of his sandwich. Tattletale stared at him in awe, shaking her head. "Mister Rat, I used to think I was the reigning champion of talking mad shit to authority figures who can kill me, provoking them until they have no choice but to bury me or give me what I want. But that... I'm in awe. That was so stupid, that shouldn't have worked at all. You were out-and-out suicidal, cussing out one of the most powerful and ruthless people in our world, and yet she crawled away with her tail between her legs. What the hell man."

"Few months ago I developed a thinker talent that includes a knack for social dynamics," he said, shrugging. "Not long before the whole Leviathan thing. Besides, it's easier to win an argument when you can prove that you're right." He took another bite, and turned on the television that hung above the paper-towel dispenser. As break rooms went, it was pretty generic, not at all suited to a superhero headquarters.

"I knew it," she punched the air. "I called it back then, I said you had to have a thinker talent to handle those people the way you were!"

He flipped a few channels until he got to a live news broadcast. "- _members of the Protectorate now turning around, returning to their own cities. No statement has been made and no explanation has been offered, but the recent history of Brockton Bay has certainly been contentious enough that a maneuver like this should not be entirely unezpected. We can only speculate as to what new developments are arising between the Protectorate and the Scavengers of Brockton Bay, but based on information that has come out before, nearly anything is possible. We go now live to_ -"

"One of these days it's going to be New Wave that gets in trouble, and nobody's going to be expecting it," Danny said, brushing the crumbs off his hands and reaching for the cleaning supplies.

"It's never going to be New Wave and you know it," Tattletale scoffed. "Now then, it looks like you've bought yourself some time, Mister Rat. Now then, let's get to the choppah."

"Why are you talking like that?"

"It's Schwarzenegger. 'Get to the choppah!' Right?"

"You sound ridiculous. Let's got catch a helicopter and move onto the next stage of our plan to save the world."

* * *

The skids touched down lightly, and the twin rotors started powering down. None of the passengers rushed out, nobody flung open the door to run out through the prop-wash, they just sat in place while they waited for the blades to idle down. It was a widely mixed assortment of individuals.

The Scavengers themselves were weirdly disparate looking. Two weeks ago they had been eerily uniform, with black uniforms and hoods, bulked out so that nobody could tell one of them from the others. Today, only Pariah wore that outfit, but hers was trimmed with glimmering silver in various places, from metallic thread wrapped around her wrists to small stiletto-like blades that fit into loops in her costume. Gulliver was wearing the same gray-beige power armor, generic parts in generic configuration, with a pair of nine-millimeter handguns in holsters on his hips with extra clips, a pair of stun-guns strapped to his back, and a heavy square shield that he was resting to one side, the back of it covered in containment-foam grenades that were clipped into place for quick removal. Benthic was also wearing her armor, deep blue, streamlined, with a half-reflective visor, and modular pods slotted into place on her hips, thighs, forearms, and shoulders. Oni Lee was wearing a pair of loose-fitting linen pants and a bandolier of knives and a face mask that showed a grinning Japanese demon's face. Wharf Rat was dressed in cargo pants and a trenchcoat, with combat boots and his brown mask with the built-out mouth and nose.

Citrine was no longer wearing the evening gown that Accord had always demanded, but had switched to a fashionably-fitted pantsuit that looked severe but enticing on her slender figure, and kept the elegant yellow jeweled mask that her former employer had made for her. Usher rated highly enough in the Protectorate that his new armor, produced by Dragon and Armsmaster and Kid Win and Masamune and Big Rig and a consortium of other tinkers, was customized to his costume. It was tall and broad-shouldered, in bold silver and gleaming crimson with a heavy neckguard like a yoke over his shoulders. The gauntlets were hevily built up with implanted weaponry and gadgetry, but the gloves themselves were thin enough that his power could work through them. Floret was out of costume entirely, wearing blue jeans and sandals and a cardigan over her bony shoulders. Her hair was dyed green and swept up into a bun on top of her head, secured with a few simple pins. Shamrock on the other hand was in full regalia, a kelly-green bodysuit and face mask that left her long red hair flowing free, with a pair of holstered handguns and a four-leaf clover emblem on her shoulders and knees. Epoch huddled in a thick black-and-purple cloak, conspicuously cultivating his mysterious silence.

Wharf Rat was the first one to stand up and open the sliding side doors, and led the way out onto the boat. It was a chartered yacht, because that was the easiest kind of boat to rent for a day with a helipad and some deck space and a minimal crew who could be evacuated before the action started. It was a tall three-decker for the luxury billionaire set, but unlike virtually every other boat of its type it was not gleaming white, but rather a soothing sea-foam green. The rental had been a surprisingly reasonable price, but the deposit had been very, very high when the owner found out it was being used for parahuman business. The other capes filed off the helicopter behind him, and Eidolon came walking over from the bow, having already teleported in ahead to clear the area of bystanders and onlookers. "I have so many bad feelings about this," Eidolon said to the Rat, as they came together for a handshake. "But I keep trying out different precognitive powers, and they all seem to indicate that this is going to go okay. So I guess the only real question is whether the Simurgh can baffle all of those different precognitive powers."

"I won't lie, it may be possible for her," Danny said, and both men felt the tension of the day. "But we try anyway, right?"

"I've had tons of trouble sleeping ever since you mentioned to me that it was even possible for Scion to turn against us and attack," Eidolon admitted. "Even I am just a gnat compared to him. I think the only reason I've been able to live a normal life is because I never stopped doubting that Scion was always going to be on our side. I can't imagine living even five more years like this, wondering if today was the day that he decided to try something new and just blow up the planet. And the idea that humanity would live like that for three centuries, always knowing what was going to happen... can you imagine if the people of the world had a deadline for the End, the Apocalypse? If they realized that nothing really mattered at all because Scion was someday going to stop playing games and kill us all..." Eidolon shook his head. "And it's a matter of time. Sooner or later. Because that was his purpose all along, his mission was to make us fight, make us suffer, and then kill us all. He's taking his time, that's all. This... this needs to get done. We can't live like this. Not for a century, a year, a week." Eidolon's voice was firm and certain, but backed with fear. It was the voice of a man speaking what had to be done, or else.

"Exactly what I was thinking," Danny said.

"Nice view from here," Gulliver said.

"It is," Benthic said.

"Something bothering you?"

She shook her head. "Nothing important. Not today."

"C'mon, if something's bothering you, maybe I can help."

"Not with this," she said, averting her eyes.

Gulliver paused, hesitated, and then nodded. "Okay. But if you ever need someone to-"

"I checked the Parahumans Online page," she blurted out. "To see what they were saying about me. There's a new theory going around the message board, that I'm actually a bunch of rats piloting a power armor, like another of the Druid's drones."

Gulliver stared at her.

"It's stupid, I know, but it really has been bugging me," Taylor said lamely.

"That's adorable," Gulliver said, his voice choked with mirth.

She sighed. "Fuck you," she muttered, but her heart wasn't in it. For his part, Gulliver just pictured hundreds of cute white mice operating the Benthic armor from the inside, like the cartoons where three kids would stack up on top of each other inside of a trenchcoat to look like an adult. He stifled a giggle and paced off a few steps away from her.

Epoch straightened, his hood rustling as he spoke. "She comes."

The heroes and rogues and mercenaries looked in all directions, checking the sky, and then something blipped on Usher's long-range radar. "That way!" he said, pointing. Danny shaded his eyes as he stared, and soon was able to pick out the alabaster-white figure of the Simurgh, flying down at a long slow angle. He wings were spread to look like she was using them to glide, but the angles were a little off, and she was not bobbing on air currents like gliders did, just moving steadily and smoothly like anyone else using telekinetic levitation.

"The scream is starting," Floret pointed out.

"Working on it," Citrine said, and the air began to haze with yellow, speading out from her. The area of effect was not a dome, but more of a thick disc. It spread out from her for twenty feet to every side, but only a couple feet up above their heads. The sound in their minds began to fade.

"You don't quite have it," Floret said. "It's close, but not quite there."

Shamrock nudged the yellow-clad woman. "C'mon, we'd all like to finish this job and not be crazy."

Citrine ignored her and tuned her power a little more, until Floret nodded her approval. The Simurgh approached, and for a minute it looked like her feet were going to touch down on the deck of the boat, but it was just a trick of the swell and ebb of the waves under the yacht. The pictures of her made her look like an angel, all brilliant-white with flawless features and a great wreath of feathers. But up close, she was horrifying in unexpected ways: without the wings, she would still stand fifteen feet tall. She loomed over them all effortlessly, and her head did not turn in their direction at all.

"Kind of miss having Morrigan around to translate Endbringer-to-English," Oni Lee stage-whispered to Wharf Rat.

"Too risky," Danny said. "But I really do know exactly what you mean."

The Simurgh stood on the air, hands flat and loose at her sides, toes pointed downwards, her chin slightly lifted. But her wings furled, rearranged themselves. The largest of those wings, the one that normally curled around her body, stretched out towards them, the feathers glittering like finely-serrated knives, the light breaking on the edges of them. The joint of the wing was built up with pinion feathers, thick and powerful looking, broader and thicker than the Simurgh's actual torso. "The deepest part of her body, the core," Pariah muttered. "Someone tell me where to cut."

Shamrock and Floret conferred for a second, then pointed at a specific area. Epoch turned to Eidolon. "Be ready to catch," the head of the Adept villain organization advised him.

Pariah unspooled what looked like Christmas tinsel off of her wrist, thin metallic ribbon that glimmered in the early-afternoon light. It was lightweight and malleable, easy for her telekinesis to control. But it was also a metallic composition that her Flechette powers could affect. And with the same physics-breaking power that had killed Leviathan charging the metal ribbon, Pariah swept it down and around in a tight loop, carving a section of the white wing loose from the rest. The section cut loose was about the size of a garbage can, a cylindrical section that showed all the layers of the Endbringer's anatomy. The sections inside, like tree rings, alternated roughly as white-black-silver-white as they approached the center of the core. The cylinder hung in the air as Pariah retracted the tinsel, but the rest of the Simurgh tipped over and started to drop before Eidolon caught it with his telekinesis.

"Shit," he said, looking at the massive inert facade of the Simurgh. "There is no place to set this down, is there?"

"Toss it overboard," Danny said. "She can grow another one."

Eidolon tried to look casual and nonchalant as he flicked the corpse of his third-greatest enemy over the railing and let it sink into the water, as if he wasn't daunted by the disrespectful gesture and the enormity of this moment. The cylinder was already regrowing at a fantastic rate, two feet wider in every direction, slowing as it floated down into Citrine's aura. The regeneration ground to a halt, and it hovered in the air.

"The enemy is helpless, offered to us of its own power," Usher said, his voice husky. "And now we do surgery to take out its programming so that we don't need to fight one another."

"Someone should be taking pictures," Oni Lee said.

"Usher, Eidolon and I all have cameras in our helmets," Taylor said. "We're recording all of this all the time. I think the other two are uploading to the Protectorate in real-time. I considered livestreaming this, too."

"All the hits," Gulliver muttered, shaking his head. "You could have had _all_ the hits with a livestream of Endbringer surgery..."

Pariah had finished trimming away the excess until there was a strikingly plain gray orb hanging in the air. Without all the externalities and distractions, this thing was the Simurgh, the alien weapon of immense psychic power. It was about two feet around, and did not reflect any light. And now the other members of the assembled team were at work. Shamrock and Usher were holding printouts of detailed instructions, most of them diagrams drawn by Oni Lee or Wharf Rat himself. Usher had a hand on the Simurgh-orb, imparting his power to make it glow, and make sure it could survive what was about to happen. Epoch paced in a circle around them, jumping forward and backward seemingly at random, and periodically shouting instructions at the surgeons to correct them, every time he jumped back in time to warn them about a close brush with death. Shamrock just stood by, apparently uninvolved, but her power was working passively to assist them all while she read out instructions from the pages in her hands. Floret and Eidolon were working on something, emptying a huge compressed-gas tank covered with warning labels into what looked like a shiny Mylar balloon. Citrine held her field up, adjusting slightly this way or that when the instructions required a different form of physics.

"Looks complicated," Gulliver said.

"Did you read the instructions they've got?" Danny asked him.

"Nah. Not my department."

"Trust me, you can't see a quarter of what's actually going on there. The Simurgh gave us shorthand instructions, that were meant to only make sense during this procedure. They've already failed and killed us all a couple dozen times, but this is part of the process for getting all the components into the right order. They're going to force that hydrogen into a fusion reaction like a sun, then Pariah's going to turn the silver orb invulnerable to keep it contained. Shamrock, Floret and Eidolon are going to start it spinning and convectioning in a specific pattern, while Epoch forces it through time until it contracts into a teeny-tiny neutron star built exactly the way they want, and then they're gonig to phase it out of sync with our universe and slide it over the Simurgh's core with a perfect fit so that the new thing they made will be forced to replace the old bit exactly in the same place, at the same time as Floret and Pariah reconnect the interfaces so it does not lose connection before or after. They're going to break physics a dozen different ways, playing with fusion reactions and high-energy physics, relativity and the border of black holes, violating hell out of several fundamental physical laws like 'two objects cannot occupy the same space' and 'conservation of mass and energy', not to mention all the time jumping and the fact that a huge part of the plan is only labeled as 'luck'. But apparently, this is a simple tech support job for the sort of computer that the Simurgh happens to be."

"And that's if the Simurgh actually gave you correct instructions and isn't tricking you into blowing up the world," Gulliver pointed out.

Danny blew out a long breath. "Why do you have to think like that? Huh? That kind of negativity isn't good for any of us." He reached over and punched Gulliver lightly on the arm.

"He spends too much time around Taylor," Oni Lee chuckled.

"Besides, I checked in with Dinah before we left," Danny said. "Our odds of losing the world this week dropped to fifteen percent. We're on the right path. I don't take many chances, I just look like I'm taking a lot of chances."

"Would've been nice to have that Marchosias chick working with us on this one," Taylor said, propping an elbow on Oni Lee's shoulder and leaning on him. "Can you imagine? Dinah's predictions, Marchosias's ability to manipulate probability, Tattletale's information, and Shamrock's crazy luck power."

Danny nodded. "It would be amazing. Too bad she was completely bonkers. She would have killed us all if she had been here."

"Is Shamrock dancing?" Taylor asked, staring past the others.

Her father nodded. "Yeah. Apparently having her spend twelve seconds 'performing recreational movements in rhythm' sets off a chain of events that saves four pages worth of steps and explanations. This is... honestly just kind of weird at this point."

"Ya think?" his daughter grinned sardonically, shaking her head. "Dad, they're creating a fusion bomb to jump-start a borderline black hole because they're trusting an Endbringer, and this is the least dangerous thing that's going to happen for the next couple days. Yeah, it's weird at this point."

Gulliver shrugged. "Wonder how they're getting by back home."

"If any villains make a move, New Wave and the Auxilliary team will jump into action," Danny said. "If the heroes try to attack again, they've got orders to surrender peacefully and give name, rank and serial number."

"So, Dad?" Taylor asked. "Where the hell did you find a green yacht? Seriously?"

"Hang on, they're doing it now," Oni Lee said, twitching his shoulder to get her attention.

The Scavengers watched with bated breath while the metal orb was fitted over the Simurgh core. Epoch jumped around rapidly, each time touching one of the participants slightly or speaking a couple words to them. They stopped, they settled, Citrine dropped her amber-colored aura, and Pariah took her hand off the metal sphere, and it tore away in a second as white wings surged out in a coruscation of feathers and angles, growing continuously. The feminine body was the last part to form, sprouting from the center like a flower.

But this time, there was no scream. No amber field, no damping measures, and no siren's song of madness. The alabaster-white winged woman stood above the deck precisely as she had when she arrived. But this time she dipped her chin, and she seemed to look directly at all of them with her eyes, and nodded slightly. It was a small gesture, only visible because her head was the size of a beer keg, and wafted her floating hair around her face. Then Danny finally released the breath, and slumped against the boat rails.

"Okay," he said. "Thank you all for your help, you've done.. you've done amazing things here today, all of you. But this gets worse before it gets better, and we're already at 'close proximity to Endbringer' levels of bad. All of you should probably get on the helicopter and get out of here, the further you are from us the better."

"I think that goes for me too," Gulliver said. "I left my other self back on shore, I'll just be heading out. Sorry, at this point I'm moral support at best, and too likely to get in the way. And unless I slather myself in barbecue sauce and go streaking thorugh Ellisburg, this is already the most dangerous day I'm ever going to have in my life."

"You could try to saddle up the Ash Beast," Oni Lee suggested. The last of the surgeons got onto the helicopter, and the fans began spooling up.

"I could call the Sleeper a weenie to his face," Gulliver countered.

"You could crudely proposition the Three Blasphemies," Oni Lee shot back.

"I could try to break out of the Birdcage," Gulliver grinned back.

"You could call up the head of Cauldron and bitch her out to her face," Oni Lee suggested.

"I could march into Alexandria's office and threaten her," Gulliver tried. The chopper lifted off, heading back west towards shore.

"You could call Dauntless a coward in the middle of two Class-S events," Oni Lee laughed.

"Okay, you two, you're done," Danny said. "And _technically_ Alexandria's office is in Lose Angeles, I was in the Chief Director's office. Now, we need to get this boat back to Brockton Bay, but you don't need to-"

Eidolon walked up from the side, putting his hands together to form a T for 'time out'. "Hang on, you're just gonna drive this thing back? That'll take hours."

"Yeah, we-"

"Boring," Eidolon said, and gestured with one hand. The yacht lifted up from the water, pivoted sixty degrees, and raced off. The Simurgh flew alongside it unhurriedly, but the wind whipping Danny's coat around told him they were going well over a hundred miles per hour.

"Screw this," Gulliver grunted. "I don't get seasick but this is just ridiculous. I'm out." And with that he vanished away.

Oni Lee shrugged. "I'm gonna go run ahead and get Morrigan ready, save us some time," he called out, pictching his voice above the wind. He leaped up, somersaulting over the railing, and exploded to nothing before he hit the water, teleporting far ahead.

Taylor clung to a railing with one hand. "Well, I guess we've got a little time until we get to shore," she said. Danny braced himself against a cabin close by. Eidolon had floated up out of earshot, flying above the ship while he towed it telekinetically.

Danny nodded, pulling off the mask. "We don't get enough you-and-me moments, I think."

"We don't get enough that aren't life-and-death situations," she corrected. "Still, once we deal with Scion, that should be the end of it for a while."

"Gambler was pretty clear about that," he said. "Our last fight, after that our work is done. I'll be glad to retire. This has been an exhausting year."

"It's only been about ten months," she pointed out.

He gave her a fake glare. "Don't nitpick me. This is The Year Of The Rat. And it has been exhausting. What are you going to do when I step down?"

"Probably keep going," she mused. "With however much of the team is going to stick around. I'll try to keep the mind-reading power under wraps, but I've considered that maybe the world could use a telepath. Maybe if people knew that someone can read minds, they'd rethink their decisions. Keep less secrets. Or I could contract out to some judges or police detectives. But that's idle thoughts, I'd rather be a hero with an edge that nobody knows about."

"It's a hard road, you already know that," he responded.

"Still, worth it," she conceded.

"Worth it. I don't have a lot of regrets, even if it's been a convoluted path. I wanted to get the ferry running, to help the people who lived in the Docks. I beat up Lung and the ABB and the Merchants so that I could make a big impression on the Protectorate and get them to get the ferry up and running. Man that was a long time ago. And then I had to protect the Docks so that nobody would start a gang war and kill dozens of civilians. Then Kaiser set me up to fight Crusader, and Coil set me up to fight everyone at the same time. I captured half the Empire, then went after Coil. I got him and drove the Travelers underground, and finally got to join the Protectorate. And then I found out how corrupt the PRT was, and had to do something about that because they wouldn't let me fix up the ferry. More villains, more crooks, Mouse Protector, Leviathan, Director Piggot... then the Druid, and Director Glenn. I took out the Undersiders, survived Butcher, chased out Faultline, and finally got the ferry working. I went after the enforcers, tracked the corruption in the PRT, then Slaughterhouse Nine and Lamia. Starting the Scavengers, cleaned out the city, built the factories, took out Accord, finished off the Empire Eighty-Eight, dismembered the Elite, fixed the city's economy and politics... Now here we are. The Fallen, Morrigan, Contessa, Doctor Mother, Simurgh, Scion. What the hell has this year been?"

"It's been better because you helped," Taylor smiled, holding a hand out for him. He took it and squeezed. "Now then," she said. "Let's talk less about you for a while. Talk to me about Mom."

* * *

The Class-S klaxons were already whooping when the boat came in. This time it looked like an orderly evacuation, there was no sign of the chaos that had marked the streets after Leviathan's entrance, or the arrival of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Either the city's residents were adapting better to these conditions, or the heroes he had left behind had taken steps to make sure it went smoothly. The boat splashed down into the water and the ropes moved themselves to tie it up in place, as Eidolon hung in the air, humming and gesturing to control the telekinesis. The Simurgh hovered above the harbor, only fifty feet away from Morrigan. The smaller winged woman stood on a thin rim of fog in the air, and seemed quite untroubled there. Danny was glad to see that his mice and rats had kept themselves in position to scout about, he could see their memories to observe the evacuation, and he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. When the Endbringer alarms had sounded, the mice had lined up on the streets, using coordinated movements to guide people along. Hundreds of faces had relaxed and eased when they saw that the rodents were helping out. They knew they were taken care of. The rodents gestured them not to run, but to move safely and confidently to the shelters.

Danny had been miles from shore when that happened. This was not smart mice in Boston moving to connect their network with Brockton's. This wasn't mice signing police reports while he was asleep. This was his mice doing exactly what he would have done if he'd been around, using perfect coordination and teamwork like they did for him. It had to be impossible, he knew.

He shook himself out of it. No time. "Okay, Taylor, I'd like to tell you to get to a shelter, but I know you'd tell me off. So, get yourself to the factory. The walls are thick there, you should be well-protected. And, the Scavengers are right there as well, you guys can watch after each other. And... shit, Kurt and Lacey and there too, dammit they're supposed to be in shelters. Looks like a couple dozen dockworkers decided not to go to shelters. Okay, now I definitely need you to keep them safe," he said, shaking his head. "I'll be in the tunnels, I have a leftover console there I can use for communications and coordination. Just a couple miles away, I'll be in touch the whole time. All right?"

"Be safe, Dad," Taylor said, and hugged him. He hugged her back fiercely, then sent her running off. She was traveling as fast as a car on a freeway by the time she was out of sight, and he shook his head as he lifted a manhole cover and exposed the ladder beneath. Those upgrades that Panacea had worked on the girl were really something, and she was getting better all the time.

"Oni Lee, check in," he said.

"Oni Lee here, boss," the other man said. "I'm in contact with Morrigan, she's linked up with Simurgh. We're ready on your mark. But, wouldn't this be easier if you were talking to Morrigan directly?"

"Still don't entirely trust her," Danny said. "It doesn't hurt anything to be extra-safe. So we're routing the communication through at least one non-mental channel of verbal communication, just for safety."

"But not my safety," Oni Lee drawled. "Thanks boss."

"Oh, hush you. If it gets really bad, you can teleport and scrub out anything she does to you. It'll suck, and it'll take a few months for you to recover, but it's better than any of the rest of us," Danny said.

"Nah, I think Oni Lee is right," Salvage said. "That's kind of cold."

"It probably won't come to that," Pariah said. "Besides, too late now to change the plan."

"Thanks, Pariah," Danny said, squatting down to get past some pipes. His rodents were already ahead of him at the console, firing it up. "I'll be in place soon, but I'm ready to go now, Oni Lee. Tell them to call him."

"Got it, sending," Oni Lee said. And he relayed the instructions to Morrigan, who relayed them to the Simurgh, who released a telepathic call she had never used before: a wide-band call that would attract attention from anyone and anything that had enough power to sense it. She had never used it because the only entity that call might reach was her Enemy, the one that injured her and drove her off to lick her wounds for months or years. The Enemy that would do enough damage to activate her programming's self-defense protocols, then the self-preservation protocols, over and over. She had a built-in aversion to using those, a mechanism configured to make her a more effective combatant by creating an incentive to fight without taking structural damage. But it functioned rather like a sense of pain, and the Enemy had hurt her many, many times. Her aversion was run through pattern-recognition protocols, and she knew how to link the Enemy to the pain. And her self-defense protocols had a capacity to pre-empt danger, that served by prioritizing which targets needed to be destroyed in what order. By those standards, the Simurgh hated Scion more than she hated anything else in the world. And with her programming altered, she could make her own evolving decisions about what to do about that. Her natural incliniation was to fight the Enemy, to try to destroy Scion. Perhaps to manipulate the humans into destroying Scion for her. But those that communicated had made it clear that she would be killed before Scion. That would cause her to fail on all of her priority objectives. A partial success was preferable to total failure. Maybe a thousand years from now she would figure out how to kill Scion. She could wait.

And at a house fire in Estonia, Scion heard the call. He set down the child he was saving, well clear of the fire, and floated upwards, turning in place to face the proper heading. And then he leaned forward into the air, and flew off at high speeds. He eliminated the effects of friction and inertia in a small range around his body so that he would not cause any sonic booms or radiation effects that could damage or destroy any houses, vehicles, humans, or the plants and animals that the humans valued as property. The shock of his body moving through the air currents at those speeds could have knocked out aircraft for a mile if he did not dampen it. He did not reach a cruising speed, he accelerated as fast as he could until he was halfway there, then he decelerated as fast as he could. And he could produce a lot of thrust, it took very little time to travel across a planetary surface when he was motivated.

"Scion is present, repeat Scion is present," Gulliver called out before Oni Lee had a chance.

Scion looked at the Simurgh, and recognized one of the beings it was tasked with fighting. He raised an arm, and a golden glow suffused his fingers. He fired blast from that hand, and the Simurgh dodged like it always did. He began building up a larger charge that would be harder to dodge, while a mid-rise building leased to an engineering company toppled to the ground, sinking ino its own foundations as its substructure was destroyed. And then it paused, the charged blast still held in its hand. The Simurgh had sent a message towards it. Not an attack or a trick that Scion would deflect as a matter of course, but a simple stated series of thoughts that bore information.

 _"We would like to speak to you. A representative of humanity, speaking through an intermediary, is speaking to and through the Simurgh to the being known as Scion. Please confirm that you have received this message."_

The golden man dissipated the charge, and lowered his arm.

 _"I confirm. State the purpose of this interaction."_

 _"We have a question for you."_

 _"Ask your question."_

 _"Are you getting what you want, Scion?"_

There was a very long pause before the reply. _"No."_

"See?" Danny said through the comm channels of his console, the mice pressing the buttons in the coded sequence to project his voice. "Some people just answer the question instead of giving me a hard time. Okay, Oni Lee, next part-"

 _"We would like to help you get what you want, Scion."_

 _"How?"_

 _"We have an idea for how you can distract yourself and interest yourself indefinitely."_

 _"Why is that what I need?"_

 _"Because you miss her."_

 _"I do."_

 _"You had a mission, and now you can't complete it. You had a plan for your life, you had objectives. You intended to create another generation to further your species. But you needed her for that, your partner. And now she is gone. Scion, I had a plan too. I had a mission, and my partner died,"_ Danny sent his message through Oni Lee to Morrigan and the Simurgh. He hoped that the sentiment and earnestness translated through those contacts. _"And for some time I was lost and aimless, trying to find something to do with myself now that my mission was over. But I found a new mission, Scion. One that would never end, one that drowned out all my suffering and all my confusion, and satisfied me even more than my original mission did."_

 _"Tell me."_

 _"I helped people, Scion. Not just saving lives, that is finite. It is limited and temporary, and ultimately futile. And unlike killing people or destroying, it is not boring. You can only kill people once, but you can help each of them a thousand times, and the more you help the more opportunities there are. It is a way to keep yourself from missing her, forever."_

 _"You know my mission. You attempt to divert me from my misison for your own selfish reasons."_

 _"Both my selfish reasons, and your selfish reasons,"_ Danny replied. _"If you succeed in your mission, you will have nothing. It will make you feel worse, not better. Without your partner, you cannot conclude yourself, you cannot build a new generation of your kind. All of your options are bad, except one. Help us."_

 _"I promise nothing. Tell me your proposal."_

 _"Build things. Solve problems. Make people's lives better. Show them better ways to do things. Protect them, nurture them. Find the people who are destructive, and find out why they are, and then remove that cause. It is difficult. It requires planning, consideration, foresight and forethought, as well as power. And it is far more rewarding than fighting or killing."_

 _"In your experience. Your species is nothing like mine, your thoughts and emotions are not like mine. What is true of you is not true of me."_ Scion sent back, the words intense and resentful.

 _"You won't know until you try."_

 _"And if not? Then I destroy your species and you?"_

 _"You understand that our species is your only chance at recreating your partner. It may take eons for our shards to evolve to that point, but it is possible. A non-zero probability. And the more of us there are, and the more we have to lose, the greater your chances are."_

Scion paused, and the silence stretched out, tense and heavy with possibilities. _"I won't know until I try,"_ Scion communicated through the Simurgh. And then he turned to the southeast and vanished in a flash that stretched out over the horizon.

All of the assembled individuals stared after that flash with wildly different reactions. The mice and rats seemed to carry Danny's tension and anticipation as they stared from a thousand nooks and crannies. Oni Lee stood on the shore, staring with his face slack in shock. Morrigan turned towards the city with a crafty look on her face, the Simurgh simply held position and waited, implacable.

The Class-S klaxons faded and stopped, and the shelter doors opened themselves. People stepped out into the afternoon, walked back home. Those near the waterfront gawped openly at the Endbringer that hovered harmlessly above the harbor. But stranger sights had been seen in the wake of Endbringer events in Brockton Bay. Benthic and Gulliver, Pariah and Oni Lee walked out of the massive roll-up doors of the factory's loading dock, and stared out and around.

Mice on the console pushed buttons and rang a phone call through to a familiar numbler.

"Alcott residence."

"Mrs. Alcott, this is the Wharf Rat. Could you put me through to your daughter?"

"She's right here, hang on a second."

"Hey, Mister Rat."

"Hello Dinah. I think we did it."

"You're not out of the woods yet. The one-week odds just dropped to ten percent, five years is down to five percent, three hundred years is down to five percent. Never is up to eighty percent. Rounded off, you're welcome," she said, a smile creeping into her voice. "So, it's looking really good, but don't let your guard down yet."

"Thanks, Dinah. I'm probably going to call to pester you a couple more times later."

"I'll be by the phone," she said.

Kurt and Lacie were whooping it up and hugging each other fiercely, while Barry was happily organizing a beer run. Oni Lee stared up and to the right, until his eyes fastened on Morrigan. The winged woman stared down at him, her expression a bit sad or even horrified. He staggered, fell to his right and caught himself on Taylor's shoulder, his hand coming down heavily on the armor plate. "Shit," he murmured. "Something got me. I thought I was okay but.." he shook his head. "While we were connected, I was getting something from the Simurgh, something filtered through. I can feel it..."

"Let me check," Taylor started to say, but he lunged back, shaking his head.

"No!" he cried. "No, I have to get rid of it." And then he dissolved into a burst of white chalky dust. And another Oni Lee stood on top of the roof, staring across the street. Briefly there were three of him, four, five, and then they puffed to dust, leaving one behind. The Asian man stood on the street, barefoot and swaying as if drunken. He reached up and pulled off his mask, his eyes gazing blankly at the ground.

"Shit," Danny whispered through the comms. "Oni Lee is compromised, repeat Oni Lee is compromised."

"I'm sorry," the hybrid Endbringer said through the comm systems. "I'm new to this, I didn't know. I tried to filter them out from each other, but the Simurgh's thoughts, they have a .. pressure... that is hard to resist."

Oni Lee shook his head, blinking rapidly. He vanished in a burst of chalk dust, retracing his steps.

"Keep trying to run, Oni Lee," Morrigan urged. "The contagion might be diminishing."

"Not now!" Danny groaned. "We just prevented the end of the world! This is our finest moment! We have beaten the threat that nobody thought we would ever beat! This is all supposed to be done!"

Oni Lee appeared in front of Taylor, his face etched with strain. And then he reached up, grasped her by the shoulders, gripped her tight, and activated his rage aura. Taylor gasped as she was swept in a tide of red-eyed madness, an anger so absolute that it took her mind away. Her sword was drawn in half a second, run through his throat in another. Oni Lee died, gagging on blood, sagging to the concrete in front of her. She gasped, stifled a scream as her anger vanished and she was confronted with what had happened. She dropped to her knees, and tears burst from her eyes. A quiet mind opened up inside of her own, blank and unmoving, with a twist of electricity lodged inside of it that gnawed at it, pulled at it.

"Benthic!" Pariah gasped, stooping over her. "Are you okay?" Gulliver hovered over her shoulder.

"Oni Lee is in my mind," Taylor panted. "And Morrigan's in his mind, too, or the Simurgh. Shit, it's... The Simurgh's song, we didn't stop it we just confined it, and Morrigan let it out, into herself, into Oni Lee, into... me..."

Pariah stood, staring up into the air where the winged woman stood, looking dispassionately interested. "Panacea, can you fix her?"

"I can't do brains or thoughts!" Panacea answered, her hands trembling. She knew that her answer really meant that she did not dare try, not that she could not succeed.

Panacea looked from Taylor, who was growing pale, trembling in her armor as the Simurgh's cry worked its way through her thoughts. Leet and Uber came running, but they both had the lost eyes of someone who wanted to help and had no idea how. Gulliver appeared at Taylor's side, helping Panacea hold her upright. Danny appeared as a hologram, his face etched with concern and worry and wretched, gut-crushing fear.

They all surrounded Taylor, holding her up, staring up towards Morrigan floating in the air. Behind her, the Simurgh pivoted in the air, facing her directly. The Endbringer did not make a move or shift a feather, but Morrigan's head spun more than a hundred and eighty degrees in a half-second, the snapping of her neck sounded like potato chips crushed underfoot. Then she dropped in place, thudding against the pavement with a singular lack of ceremony. And the Simurgh pivoted back around to watch the ocean. Its plans were closer to fruition, one less obstacle.

"It's gone," Taylor panted, sitting up straight. "Her song, it's gone now, there's nothing growing in my head now. Morrigan must have been the link. I'm fine, I'm fine," she repeated, pulling herself to her feet.

"Thank God," the Wharf Rat sighed into her ear. "I was really worried there. I have nearly lost you a couple times, I would hate for that to ever happen to you, even for a second."

Salvage was staring down at Oni Lee's corpse. "Oh shit," he breathed. "Butcher's dead. Long live the Butcher." His eyes tracked up to Taylor, growing wider.

Taylor stepped back several feet, clear of everyone else, and then vanished in a burst of flames and noise, reappearing thirty feet away in another explosion. She stared at her hands, feeling the growing strength and power that filled her up.

Tattletale swaggered out of the factory interior, grinning. "Looks like you're in trouble," she said. "Anyone that wants Butcher's powers is after you now. You're going to need a team around you."

Taylor shook her helmeted head. "I was supposed to give this up, get back to classes, spend some time training and-"

"Not gonna happen anymore," Tattletale said. "But don't sweat it, I'm watching out for you." She draped an arm over Benthic's shoulders. "Now then, where's the rat man? I wanna talk to him about this team he's built, now that like half the starting lineup is dead."

There was silence from the comms. "I, uh," Danny started, hesitated. "I can't seem to find myself."

"What?" Taylor blurted out a second before Tattletale. "What do you mean?"

The silence drew out a little longer. "Taylor, I... I don't think I made it."

Tattletale turned, staring at the fallen building that Scion had leveled with his first volley, sunk into its own foundations. She bit back a breath, and then said slowly, "Wharf Rat, were you in the storm drains or steam tunnels under Huguenot Street?"

"I... I think so," he said, his voice even smaller, sadder. "Damn."

Taylor's voice rose, nearing hysterics. "What are you talking about? What's going on?"

"Pariah?" the man's voice said. "Tell Kurt and Lacie to hug my daughter. I can't anymore."

Taylor's ears filled with static and she did not even feel herself drop to her knees. She only vaguely felt the two dockworkers wrap her up in their burly arms, holding her as they cried for their friend, her father. And a rush of rats and mice ran from the drainpipes, surrounding her with their furry bodies. They swarmed over her legs, embracing her with their mass as best they could, a pressure and warmth suffusing her as they tried to embrace her en masse.

The darkness of the factory produced several more people, auxiliary Scavengers coming out of shelter now that the klaxons were done. Mockshow stood and stared a minute, then walked away. Madcap bowed his head and murmured some words, then started stripping out of his villain's costume to his tanktop and bicycle shorts, then walked away, already feeling more like Assault than he had since his wife had died. Chariot paused, traded some words with Gulliver, and both of them walked away after Assault. Brian Laborn and his sister stood awkwardly by, shared a glance with Tattletale, then scooted closer to talk to her in low voices. Floret slipped away without a word to anyone, but Wallop and Wordsworth hung around. Wordsworth muttered something ugly and the word floated away to explode harmlessly away from everyone else. Wallop grew his hand to giant proportions and cuffed his partner casually, nearly knocking him to the ground.

"I'm going to need someone to explain how Wharf Rat's ghost is still talking," Pariah said eventually.

"I've got a communications console in the sewers," Danny said, switching to a closed channel to talk to her. "I've got mice running it. I started that before I died. I was concentrating so hard on everything else I didn't even notice my body was gone. God, what kind of... anyway, I've been noticing for a long time that my powers have been working without me. My ability to control rats, that is. That's how I do my infinite multitasking trick: I have been slowly delegating more and more of my power, and even my own mind, to the rats. I've spread _who I am_ across the rats of the city. And when I died, when the real me died, the part of me that was with the rats and the mice took over. If the rodents are networked together, my consciousness has been uploaded into that network."

"For how long?" she asked, keeping her voice low.

"Brown rats that we have here live from two to three years," Danny said. "Most of these are pretty young, so I may have two or two and a half years to go. Though when they do start dying, I might start to ... I don't know, degrade. Right now the repeater rats are carrying my signal, bouncing it between them to keep the network going. And the smart rats are each holding some small part of my thoughts and mind. So my memories and personality are stored, and connected, so I can... act like I'm alive. For a while. Maybe long enough to see Taylor graduate high school. Definitely long enough to say goodbye."

Pariah stiffened up, tears running from her eyes, and Panacea caught the girl to hug her close, to cry with her. Danny disconnected that communications line. He couldn't stand to watch women cry, it hurt him someplace deep. Leet and Uber were leaning on each other. They were both dry-eyed, but their hurting was obvious just watching them. He couldn't turn away, but he could turn his thoughts to something else at least somewhat. On televisions around the city, people watched as Scion swept across the Sahara desert, leaving a trail of golden light that turned the packed sand and dust into soft loam and soil. A mass of clouds was following him, bringing rain to the world's largest desert. It was a good place to start, Danny had to admit. He watched Gambler crying at home, her parents holding her as she told them that the man who rescued her was dead. He watched as Assault, and Gulliver, and Chariot all walked into the PRT offices next to the ruins of the Protectorate Tower, and signed in at the receptionist. The Protectorate would do well with all three of them, he thought to himself. Assault had only left because he was bitter; Gulliver had a hero's heart and would be a credit to himself in their ranks; and Chariot was a tinker and that alone meant a lot to the Protectorate.

"Incoming," he murmured to Tattletale, and she looked around and spotted the figure that was approaching, fast over the rooftops. A half-dozen massive bulky quadrupeds, misshapen but powerfully built, were leaping from rooftop to rooftop, crossing city blocks in seconds. The lead one leaped down at the last second, skidding to a stop nearby as its mistress dismounted.

"I came when I heard," Bitch said, pausing to nod towards Grue and Imp, then Tattletale.

Brian Laborn, Grue, nodded back. "The PRT is going to hear pretty soon," he said. "We should be ready."

"We're going to need money and support," Tattletale mentioned. "Maybe we could talk to the highest-ranking member of the Elite that survived the attack?"

"Who do-" Imp started to say, then stopped, grinned. "Wait, no way! I thought he was dead or in the Birdcage!"

Bitch snorted through her nose. "Not everyone that the Wharf Rat hates gets sent to the Birdcage. Some of them get picked up first."

Tattletale grinned. "Getting the old team together!"

Aisha looked over at Pariah, who returned her nod. "We may be bringing new members in, too," she said.

Bitch looked over at Wallop and Wordsworth. "Even those two can be useful."

Brian looked at the crying, slumped figure of Benthic. "If we're lucky, she'l join us," he said. "She's got the kind of power we've always needed."

Danny chuckled in their earpieces, a sad and rueful sound. "You guys run your team, and run it well. It's time Panacea went back to New Wave, time that Gambler went back to a normal life. Leet and Uber have business to run, Gulliver's finally joined the Protectorate. There's not much of a team left, we never meant to stay together. Not like you guys, you can go the distance. I'd be honored if you'd take Pariah and my daughter, and Salvage, and even myself for as long as I last."

Tattletale grimaced. "Not as long as you think, Mister Rat, sorry."

Salvage shoved his hands into his pockets. "Actually, I was thinking I'd go independent. Maybe take some counseling courses, see if there's any villains out there I could reform and redeem."

Pariah looked up. "What do you mean, 'not as long as you think'?"

Tattletale slumped her shoulders. "The whole structure's unstable," Tattletale sighed, patting the smaller woman on the shoulder. "The source is dead, what's left is just... echoes. It held long enough to save the world, but without the connection between his power and this world, it can't last."

"Maybe we can get Panacea to make a whole bunch more repeater rats for him, so we can keep his network going?" Pariah said hopefully.

"Doesn't stop the signal degrading," Tattletale said, her mouth tight. She turned to Wallop and Wordsworth. "Hey, you two! You've been trained on Chariot's teleporter, right?"

"That's right, slattern," Wordsworth said, the insult sliding from his mouth in an oily cloud that detonated to punctuate his sentence.

"Cool. I've got some coordinates for you to punch in, we're recruiting the Elite into our team," Tattletale said, texting a string of numbers on her phone to his phone. "Now, go, get started."

"Why the hell are we doing that?" Grue asked.

Tattletale looked over at him. "Because Scion didn't make any promises. And right now, our old friend the leader of the Elite can muster up a hundred villains to help us out. Now then, I'm going to call the Protectorate and see how fast they can get here in full force."

The rats swarmed away from Taylor, and Kurt and Lacie held her up, holding her between them. She was vaguely aware that these were her new foster-parents; that's what god-parents were for, after all, and she was an orphan now. She had cried herself out, this new realization did not draw out another burst of tears, but just rang around in the hollowness she was feeling now. She lifted her visor and swiped her face clean, then lowered it again before she looked up at Kurt, then Lacie. "Thank you," she murmured. "Can I-...?"

They nodded and stepped back, letting her alone with her thoughts and her fathre's voice.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I guess this job did kill me. You were right. I should have stayed safe, I should have kept my distance."

She sobbed once, and caught the next one in time to stop it. "You saved billions of lives, Dad. I'm proud of you."

"And you have no idea what that means to me," he replied, his voice carrying a smile despite everything. "And I hope it means something when I tell you that I'm proud of you too, Taylor."

"More than you know," she said, sounding more tired now than distraught. "But at least you stuck around long enough to say goodbye. That's what always hurt the most with Mom, you know. She was just gone, with no time to say the words we need to say."

"You're going to have to wait a little bit," Danny said. "Scion's on his way back."

"Arm up!" Brian Laborn said, swathing himself in darkness as Grue. Bitch swung up onto her dog, and Tattletale dropped back as she produced a handgun. Pariah stitched together a half-dozen lean and quick-looking minions for herself, each one bearing spiked knuckles that gleamed with the influence of her physics-breaking power. A crowned figure in chainmail and silk stepped out of the factory with Wordsworth and Wallop flanking him, and a troop of soldiers at his back. Taylor drew her sword and stepped to the front, measuring her breaths. Flying figures appeared in the air, a fleet of metallic dragons loaded with dozens of armored heroes ready for the fight of their lives.

"You ready for what's about to happen, Benthic?" Grue asked her.

"I need a new name," she said, rolling her shoulders to get the kinks out.

Scion stopped in front of the Simurgh, hovering, glowing. Danny Hebert's daughter Taylor held her ground, waiting for Scion's answer.

 **The End.**

 _Author's note: I hope you all enjoyed this alternate version of Wildbow's Worm story. I know there will be those who hate the ending, but it would have been hard for me to end it any differently than this. I'm not entirely done with edits, so if the readers find any factual errors or continuity flaws, let me know so I can fix them. Worm is a huge story, a huge setting, and it is hard to keep every detail accurate. I can overlook aspects of it by accident. Likewise, some changes were made deliberately, but I would hope that by now those are obvious in their context. Thanks to everyone that has supported this massive endeavor. This wordcount is equivalent to a full trilogy of novels, and was written in eight weeks, published in seven. And for any of you that really hate the ending, I invite you to write your own. Show me your entries, how you would change what I've changed. Fanfiction is organic and open-ended._

 _And if any of you want to pick it up from here for a sequel, feel free to adopt it._

 _This story was written because I read Worm and I had to do it. I read some reddit threads on the subject and hit an idea that gelled instantly in my head, a full story of Danny Hebert and how different everything could have been. And it was a big idea, a strong idea, that wouldn't take no for an answer. I tried to write other projects, but every time I sat down Danny was right there, new ideas spawning all the time like Druid and Taylor the telepath and Oni Lee erasing the Butcher personas and the parallels between the death of Anne Hebert and the death of Eden. Finally I had to open a file and start or it was just going to keep growing. I hope you all enjoyed this for what it is. I seriously considered not uploading it, just writing it for myself and being done with it._

 _For those that expressed interest in my original works, I've recently started self-publishing on Amazon under my own name. And for any writers who anticipate publishing their own works, I'll tell you that print-on-demand and electronic self-publishing is absolutely the future of literature; stay well clear of anything with a no-compete contract or restocking penalties._

 _s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D154606011 &field-keywords=christopher+markley&rh=n%3A154606011%2Ck%3Achristopher+markley_

 _I've presently got a comedy superhero novella that is the first of a series in progress, a superhero-versus-zombies story that is a lot smarter than it sounds, and in the next few weeks I'll have a contemporary-fantasy young-adult novel added to that site. Now that I'm free to write on my own terms, any ideas I want, there'll be more entries added regularly and often._


End file.
